


Lay of Lalaithan

by capitainpistol



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Alternate Ending, Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Horror, Dimension Travel, End of the World, F/M, Gen, Gods, Introspection, Monsters, Multi, Old Gods, Prophetic Dreams, Sibling Incest, Time Skips, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-09-24 03:45:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17093420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capitainpistol/pseuds/capitainpistol
Summary: Turin and Nienor reunite and journey through the Dagor Dagorath (the Final Battle) in a strange world between life and death.





	1. Chapter 1

Cirdan turned his back to the sea to look upon Middle-earth. For days he watched the still trees of the Belfalas, breathing deeply to take the memory back to Valinor. For the first time in untold ages, there was silence. No whispers of war, nothing stirring but ancient memory. He was the Last to depart.

He returned to the water, his greatest love, and gasped. A woman clad in clinging white stood on the shore. She did not shiver, but she did not move. Her hair was gold and long and dry, her skin luminous white. The curve of her belly made him curious. She should not be in the water in such a time.

“It is cold, my lady,” he said, drawn to her. 

A sudden change came in the air, as if a pebble had been thrown in the Sundering Seas and the ripples spread through the depths of Ea, shaking it to its core and to all those of the Flame Imperishable, including himself. 

He removed his cloak and wrapped it around her near nakedness; its white mithril reflected the bright sun above them and made her golden hair brighter than it already was.

“Where do you come from?” he asked kindly.

The woman’s eyes filled with tears, but she did not shed them. “Where are we?”

“The Belfalas, my lady. I am the Keeper here.” He was stunned, for he was sure he was the last living being on Middle-earth.

“The Falas…” She turned to the empty horizon, slowly looking north. “Far from Dor-lomin.” Somehow she managed to smile, but tears began to fall silently on her cheeks. “You are the Keeper? You are… Cirdan the Shipwright.”

He smiled back at her, but he was confused. Dor-lomin was sunken, along with the rest of Beleriand, ages and ages ago. He still remembered the shaking of Arda, the smoke in the sky, the ever-rolling waves crashing south. Many who had survived had come to him for refuge. Thousands and thousands and thousands of years ago.

“Are you lost, my lady?” He felt within her something of royalty, but though she was dry, she was tattered and lost, and she was no Elf. In his heart he knew as well, she was not fully of Man.

He held her hand, but felt no pulse, yet she was not cold as one who is dead or given to grief and withering. No, she was not dead, but he understood that she was not alive, and he was no longer truly in Middle-earth. 

The world was changed and still changing. 

“Are you of Beleriand?” He asked in wonder, searching his long wisdom to know her, and he did. “You have come from the Teiglin.” And Cirdan held his breath. “You are Niniel, the child of Hurin. Sister-wife to Turambar.”

She became steel hardened, grey eyes sparkling with unwanted memory. The tears dried in her eyes and she became cold, the water around her shifting. “Is my grief known to all?”

“Known and loved and pitied, my lady,” said Cirdan. 

He went to his knees, the water lapping against his stomach. Around her the water shimmered a strange dark he’d never seen before, and it spread, filling him with a great unknown fear. He could not place it, could not fathom why it was there and where it came from. 

Beyond this growing darkness the water was still blue and white and green at turns, his ship anchored just where the colors changed, but soon it would be swallowed into it too. He looked again with wonder at Nienor Niniel.

“It has begun,” she said, knowing what he did not. 

He rose to his feet and bowed. “I do not understand what is happening, but it is not my time anymore. I will leave you with this, my great lady. You may find your great loves on Tol Morwen, the single stone remaining of all Beleriand.”

She clutched Cirdan’s cloak closer to her body. 

“May you find peace, my lady.” 

“I am cursed. Cursed beyond hope. Cursed to the core of my soul.”

“It is not so.” Cirdan knew much and he was glad to impart to Nienor Niniel words of relief and pity. “Morgoth is long dead and his demons with him. Beleriand is sunken and much time has passed, much grief and joy. And the world… the world is not ours anymore.”

Bitterness dripped through her words. “Whose is it then? Why am I here? I wished death above all things.”

“Then you are unlike most Men and most like to love Illuvatar. Death was once a gift, my lady, and I do not understand the powers at work, but I can see them now, here, with you.” He grinned. “I have waited…. I have waited so long to leave, and now I wish to stay and protect you, but that is not my purpose. I must depart.”

“Then I am well named and I will mourn and cry for you, who are the first I’ve seen in thousands of years.”

Cirdan took her hand and kissed it. “It is has been an honor. And may that Flame that brought you here, may it burn bright wherever your journey takes you next.”

Neinor Niniel did not look back at Cirdan as she entered the forests, but Cirdan waited to depart until he could no longer see her. As a white flame she was, even from afar. He smiled and shed a single tear for Middle-earth, needing no more, for the maid of tears had returned.


	2. Chapter 2

Nienor’s foot stung for a sharp second and she stumbled back onto a damp log, wincing at the small bleeding wound on her bare foot. She looked up to guess the time, but the Sun and Moon were as they were when she set off. One stuck rising in the east and the other sneaking darkness in the west. 

The blue sky and yellow sun came together with the night sky and sparkling stars in a soft blending of colors, as if someone brushed their great hand across the day into night. She could make out the Menemalcar, which shined brightest and lead her North. She went on after the bleeding stopped.

Breathing became harder as the fog became thicker, and after several hours of walking to numbness, or what felt like hours, she did not know, her legs were starting to slowly burn from the inside. 

Cirdan the Shipwright told her she was in the Falas. _No_... 

He said _Bel_ falas. Middle-earth. Someplace else. Away from the sunken remains of Dor-lomin. Far away. _Middle-earth_? She knew the name, but did not know it at all.

Nienor wasn’t sure of anything. It looked so much the same. First she was in an empty sea, and then she saw land and met Cirdan. After, she found a path into the heart of the forest. She found roads easy, only when she stopped thinking of them she veered off of them, getting closer to mountains of darkness. 

Worst of all were the ravines and waterfalls. She hated the sound of water and yet found them often on her journey.

Every step took her leagues, and there were no animals except nightingales. They were her favorite, from the stories of her kinsman, Beren One-Hand and his beloved Luthien Tinuviel. The birds sang, flying in and out of light. Her heart bled, but there was beat. The water seemed louder in her ears.

Nienor walked away whenever she heard that sound, returning to the forests, the trees and the Menelmalcar, but soon they began to look like Brethil. She steeled her heart, but home was on her mind. Dor-lomin was not unlike Brethil, perhaps that was why she had loved it so.

The woods outside her house in Dor-lomin had been made bare by the time she was born, cut near to the center for firewood by order of the Easterlings for the hearth they never shared.

She went hungry and cold in Dor-lomin, but she did have some warmth. Her mother did not care to speak, but she often held Nienor and combed her hair, smiling only at her and at their kinswoman Aerin. 

As the years passed and Brodda became less vigilant, Aerin took more risks to get them food and furs for the cold restless winters under Thangorodrim's black hand. Other times Nienor was left with Labadal, whom Morwen always called, “Your brother’s friend,” and who the Easterlings ignored unless to harass and turn to difficult tasks. He had a limp and a strong voice full of tales Nienor never tired of hearing. Like Aerin he risked Brodda’s wrath when he helped them.

The last time Nienor saw Aerin and Labadal they were hurrying in the dark, in the abandoned stables of her once great house. Aerin helped Morwen and Nienor put on armor, perchance they came to foes on the road. Aerin kissed Nienor many times, but only held Morwen’s hand at the last. The women looked on each other long, Aerin’s tears falling silently and Morwen crying not at all. Nienor had never seen it, could not remember it, though she remembered all.

Nienor wished most to understand what is was Aeryn and Morwen said to each other without words, but she was too young to gather more than the truth of it all. They were never going to see each other again.

After many miles Nienor had stopped when Morwen kept going, and she looked back at Dor-lomin. She missed the only home she’d ever known, despite it bringing her only misery, and she believed then she would see Aerin again. She went on with hope of finding Turin, not knowing the shadow of Morgoth was beckoning her to her doom with the very fire that made House of Hador so beloved. 

The child inside Nienor kicked, and she stopped in surprise, shutting her eyes to let him finish. 

“Of course you’re restless,” she whispered to him, taking a deep breath and cursing her dreams for a son.

Nienor almost caressed her belly, but she stopped herself, unable to remove the memory of Turambar doing the same. They would lay in bed in the coldest of nights, so warm their flesh speckled with sweat. His kisses hot on the back of her neck. She shook her head, as if the thoughts would pool out of her ears, but she could walk forever it would not change a thing. 

“Why are you here?” Nienor asked her belly. “Why did you follow me?” Another question whispered silently in her heart. _If I am here, where is your father?_

Nienor wiped a single tear from her cheek. Your father. _Your brother_. How could she have known? Was her will greater than a curse from the greatest of the Valar? She became steel hardened again. In joy or dread, Turambar haunted her, and she wished to see him and never see him again. 

A branch cracked not ten feet away. No nightingales whistling to each other, lost in brushes, accidentally shaking branches. She rose quickly and held out a sharpened stick she had found, as tall as she was. Lucky, she had thought, but she had wanted one exact...

 _Why now?_ After days, or what she thought was days, of endless walking where she met no one and nothing hurt enough to stop her.

Men and women in all manner of cloaks surrounded her, armed with bows. All arrows right at her. She tightened her grip on her stick. Too late to look for a sharp steel sword. Nienor could get at least two before she went down. 

_What's another death?_

Someone called from the bushes: "Wait!"

A shadow emerged from higher ground, the sun behind him blinding her.

For a sweet and terrible moment Nienor thought it was Turambar, for he was tall and had his shape, and he wore the raiment of their woodland people, the Halethrim, dark to black in the shadow of the sun, she he emerged and her vision cleared. It was not Turambar. 

“Brandir,” she said, taken aback. He moved so swiftly and so upright.

Yet Brandir nearly stumbled hurrying to her, calling to his men and women with a fierce passion not to engage. He had no walking stick, no bent spine, and he smiled brightly as he never had before.

His eyes were filled with happy tears. “Niniel…”

The name stung but she smiled, happy to see him. “Brandir, you’re-”

“-here,” he let out with desperate longing. 

Nienor met him eye to eye, and it was most strange. She had always been taller than Brandir, and now she had to look up at him, and she did not like the glint in his eyes. It lacked the warmth of his healing heart.

Brandir took her hands hard in his and squashed them to his mouth of many kisses. “We are truly in the Arms of Varda. Last I saw you…” A shadow passed over his eyes as they fell to her wide belly and it should have shaken his world back to Before, when it all ended in darkness, when he was lame. Brandir smiled again, choosing to bask in the joy of her return.

He ordered Hunthor to give her a horse, and upon seeing Hunthor she hugged him. He had been one of two who pledged himself to Turambar when he decided to challenge Glaurung, but she had known him from long before and his sisters and wives.

Like all, he knew her grief and he held her in awe. When she asked for Dorlas, the other who went with them to meet the Great Worm, he said he did not know.

Nienor beheld Brandir anew with his people, his warriors. He was no longer the gentle healer she’d known, though he asked the same questions of her. How was she? Her child? Strange sensations. His insistent concern made all the more stark because he wore chainmail and armor, sword and bow. He led his people like a mighty elf lord of old, his song ahead a mighty host. More Halethrim than she had ever seen, and others too, from clans she did not know. 

“We are going South?” asked Nienor.

“South? Is there a South in Paradise?” Brandir said with a smile. 

Nienor looked up at the Menemalcar behind her and it seemed brighter and more visible to her. “We must go north.”

“Must? We must do only as we Will. This is a safe land, Niniel, and our people are plenty.”

“There were never these many People of Haleth, and you know it. Many of them were once dead, such as I. And if that is so, I do not understand why you are here. Last I saw you, you were alive.”

Brandir’s shadow returned. “My death… came not long after yours.”

Her heart broke and she reared her horse off the path. “How?”

“I could not stay in the world. Not without you in it.”

Nienor wished to know the truth, but she could not stand it just then. Not with this Brandir who was strange to her. “Then truly I am a curse to my kin, causing your death as well.”

Brandir frowned. “I chose death. _I_ chose it. For you.”

He kicked his horse and trotted off to the head of their camp. Nienor sighed, loving him but not the way he wished. There was no time to think on it more and she was in a way glad, for her thought was turning back to Turambar haunting her. Suddenly they were attacked.

Orcs came from the side of the Moon, and they slayed the People of Haleth to their second death. Brandir took command, leading them like he always wanted, and his people loved him as they never did. 

Nienor gathered women, children and the few elders who did not fight, but amidst the throng she was thrown off her horse, landing on her arm. Her wrist made a quick, snapping pop and she screamed, drawing to her a hideous orc about to sound his horn and bring his company to their small circle of survivors.

Then the orc was pulled from behind and slain by an unseen rescuer. The orc's horn fell on a rock and shattered in two.

Their rescuer was a woman, Elinell, and she claimed to be of Nienor's kin, of the House of Beor, but that was all she would say. Elinell’s grey eyes burned with a fierce hatred and she returned to the orc gaggling its last breath. She bent over it and stabbed him in the neck over and over until Nienor stopped her. 

“Let it rest,” said Nienor and repeated. “It is dead. They’re all dead.”

Brandir raised his sword and lifted the hearts of the people. “Victory! Victory! The Arms of Varda have protected us.”

Elinell smiled strangely at Brandir. She did not lift her arm. It remained dripping blood at her side. “The Arms of Varda bear savage weapons.” She brought the knife to her face. “Would all this land be full of orc so I may slay them.”

Nienor held her wrist close, the sting growing by the seconds. Without thinking, she reached for the horn with the other. The runes interested her more than Elinell suddenly frightened her. “This is a Sindarin tongue altered by the Woodsmen of Brethil.”

“It could be in the tongue of Morgoth, it makes no matter.” Elinell’s knife glinted with the same fire as her eyes. “We have powers here unknown and endless. The more our _fearless_ leader figures that out, the more I will have my wish.”

A chill passed Nienor’s spine, but she said nothing, and when she went on her horse again, she remained with the women and children.

Soon they were at Brandir's camp, a large endless gathering of tents and bonfires, and more people than Nienor had ever seen in her life. Brandir lead her his pavilian, the largest and situated in a kind of center. they dismounted. Out of the pavilion came a long missed familiar face. It was Sador, and he limped to them.

“I was going to send Niniel to you,” said Brandir by way of greeting.

Sador smiled and slowed, sighing as he beheld the young mistress of his liege lords. “This is not Niniel,” he said. “This is little Nienor. Oh, my child… I am so sorry for your grief.”

Nienor went to him and she felt like a small child indeed. She kissed his cheek and tasted the salt of his tears. She wanted to say so many things, but her fear overtook her swiftly. “What is this place, Labadal?”

“Always asking questions,” he said, thinking of Turin as a boy, who never stopped asking him questions.

“Her wrist is broken and her child might be in danger. Look after her here. Another attack by orcs will not delay the celebrations.”

“Another?” asked Sador with concern.

“That was not the first?” asked Nienor with even more.

“Please,” said Brandir, gesturing into the pavilion.

Nienor watched him go, and she was not sure because he hid it well but she thought he was slouched more.

“Celebrations,” she huffed. “After an orc attack.”

“ _A victory_ over an orc attack,” said Sador. “The people need reassurance.”

“From lies.”

Sador smiled sadly, seeing in her the steel heart of Morwen. 

“They are the first things I have seen that are not people," she went on. "That is most strange. No animals. No Elves. No Dwarves. Why do you think that is?”

He smiled again. Morwen's steel heart and Hurin's stubborn determination. “First, your wrist.”

Sador lead her into Brandir’s pavilion. Nienor looked back at the camp before entering, at the people huddled by the fires and smiling, speaking, some eating. Not a care in the world. She met the eyes of Elinell, who bowed to her and then joined Brandir.

Sador finished wrapping Nienor’s hand in a tight tourniquet. “Is the pain too bad? I can give you something.”

“Brandir is the healer. He should be here.”

“Seeing you again hurts him.”

“Reminds him, you mean.”

“Remembering is hurting, is it not, child? Even when we were alive.”

Nienor felt relief hearing it stated out loud, that they were dead. It was enough she changed the subject back to Brandir. “He was lame once.”

“I heard, though I did not hear it from him. The people do not speak of it except to say that it is a miracle.”

“Another lie. He is choosing to be this way. Choosing the lie of paradise over the truth of his life. I am still pregnant. You hide not your lameness.”

Sador nodded, but he sighed again. His hair was gone more to white and he had a small beared, but it was speckled with black and grey still. Something of youth he kept. “Will you begrudge a lame man his greatest wish? Let him live it a short while, child. Before you are to do what you are to do.”

Nienor frowned. “I’m not doing anything. He’s giving these people false hope. And that is worse. That is worse than whatever is truly happening.”

Sador became grave. “Now it is Labadal’s turn to ask. What is truly happening?”

“A sense of doom is on me, Labadal. I do not know what it is, but it has started, and lies will not help us. Not when we can conjure like wizards and walk leagues with a thought like the Valar.”

“I sense the same. Nevertheless. Let us rest a while. Let us celebrate. You have journeyed far and need some joy.”

“More lies. We must go North, Labadal. _North_. The greatest star is part of this. It burns the brightest. It –“

Brandir entered the pavilion. He could not keep his eyes off Nienor. “The tables have been set. We are honoring your return.”

“We have all returned, Brandir,” said Nienor, leaving honor right there with him. “We are dead. Every single one of us here needs no food or water, and you know that.”

“Niniel, please.” His eyes softened, yet he held the hilt of his sword. 

Pity unwanted filled her. For his sake and for Sador’s, she joined the celebrations, walking down path made for them. The people whispered as she became known. Niniel, she heard. Niniel, Niniel, Niniel, never Nienor.

Brandir kissed her hand, again hard and rushing, but she had worse hurts. Nienor took a deep breath and walked with him and it was not unlike a wedding, but she thanked him and made her way to Labadal and spoke with him almost in whispers.

“The orcs that attacked us. How could they be here? If Elves cannot be here or Dwarves, other creatures?”

“Maybe they are not orcs, or they are now, but were once Men.”

Nienor searched her muddled memory. 

“Orcs were Elves,” she said. “They were lost, thousands of years ago. Melkor took them and tortured them beyond recognition. And bred them.”

“Elves _and_ men and even some Valar, before either Children ever woke. Who knows what fell creatures of fire… _Melkor_ made in those times.”

Sador shuddered at the name no one spoke. Morgoth was the name of the Great Enemy, the one used if dared to be spoken. Nienor heard it differently. _Melkor_ rung clear as a bell within her. And it did not frighten her, or move her at all, not even to pity. 

“They are as ants,” said Nienor of those creatures and of Melkor. “Nothing else he can do to harm me.”

Sador’s heart went aflame, like he was in the grace of his manhood again, seeing his young lord Hurin take up his fallen father’s helm. Nienor’s golden hair shone much like her father’s hair once did, under its Dwarf wrought iron, yet she had grown more to resemble Morwen and her brother Turin. Perhaps more beautiful and harder, for her grief seemed to Sador the most profound of their doomed House. He could not imagine living their grief, nor it living inside his body still. 

Nienor was trying her best not to think of Turin, Sador could tell, but the swell of her belly made her uneasy in her seat. She sweated a little and did not take sustenance as a woman long in her pregnancy would. And Nienor indeed had more of Hurin than his golden hair and stubborness. She was tender and kind, even when she was neither to herself. She would touch her stomach and then quickly remove her hand, as if she accidentally touched something of unbearable heat after enduring chilling cold. 

Nienor looked away, to Brandir. He was starting to struggle, taking his seat at the head of the table for longer periods. He attempted to secretly rub his leg, and always he looked at her and he smiled, expected her to smile back. When she did not, he became sour. 

“He’s different too,” she said, ignoring Sador’s eyes on the swell of her belly. More than living his dreams. Nienor sensed a deep sadness within him that had nothing at all to do with any kind of shame over what he perceived to lack.

“He’s a good man," said Sador. "Better at the healing arts than at war. He means well.”

Brandir came for Nienor, but she did not want her talk with Labadal to end. Things were starting to come together, and most of all he was her first friend. Sprung straight from her childhood.

Labadal had carved things for her and told her stories, ending everything he said with, “You are so like your brother,” whom she adored and admired from afar all her life. Sador was the only way she had known Turin, for Morwen seldom spoke of him. 

“Niniel,” said Brandir, already offering his hand.

Nienor frowned, but a touch from Sador stayed her anger.

“Will you take a walk with me?” Brandir asked her.

Many eyes were on Nienor, but those under the fist of Melkor did not fear such trivialities. She did not rise. 

“I wish to speak further with Labadal about the Easterlings,” she said evenly.

“Easterlings?" Brandir chuckled incredously. "There are no Easterlings in the Arms of Varda.”

“There may not be Easterlings here, perhaps, but they were once men and if I am dead and you and Labadal, then Easterlings must be here. As many of them died as us. Look around you, Brandir. We’re the only ones here. No animals. No other races. You can walk. How did this food appear? Tell me. I know you’re not hungry, you are eating because we once ate, that is all. Because food is good and we like it and want it. And you fight orcs because you want to fight.”

Brandir tightened his jaw. “They are orcs, our ancient enemy. They deserve nothing but death.”

“They deserve pity, now that they here with us.”

“Paradise has its price, Niniel.”

“Paid for in full,” said Nienor with much bitterness. “We are not in the Arms of Varda, Brandir.”

Sador smiled watching the Child of Hurin, filled with pride. The Easterlings were also Children of Illuvatar and so had a place in this Dead Land That Lived. If they carried their hatred and betrayal with them into death then they were soon going to be a force to be reckoned with. Brandir had not listened to Sador’s warnings before, and he had dropped it, accustomed to going on ignored.

Orcs on one side, Easterlings on the other. Neither Nienor nor Sador had to be strategists to know that was a more difficult fight.

Brandir breathed deeply, about to speak, but Elinell rushed to them.

“The sky! It is gone and... and I have not found him.”

Brandir, Sador and Nienor rushed out and joined the people looking up at the sky. The Sun and Sky and the Stars and Moon were merging, blending, fighting. Torrents of light and sound filled the air forming into a Darkness visible, a dread that shook all their bones with foreboding. 

Brandir unsheathed his sword, settled always on his belt. The people’s awe and confusion turned to screams. Eyes fell to the trees instead of the sky. 

“ATTACK!” called Brandir. “ORCS!”

Nienor was unmoved and Sador, seeing her lack of fear, did as she did. Absolutely nothing.

“Brandir,” said Nienor, taking his arm. “Wait.”

And finding an old desperate part of himself, Brandir kissed her. The first and the last he would have with his beloved Niniel. “I have to do this,” he said, tears in his eyes as he realized she would never love him. He would never touch her again. “I have to.”

Nienor let him go.

Brandir and Elinell were in their element, and the warriors rose to the call, having died as fallen soldiers. Vengeance burned inside of them. But there too many, too many who did not fight, who remembered and hurt. 

“This panic is pointless,” she said, swallowing down a lump in her throat. “Our Will dooms over all.”

An orc came to her and she stared at him with her cold grey eyes. And he stopped, overcome by her power. When those closest saw, they stopped and recognized their power. The orcs stopped in confusion, staring at their hands and not recognizing their dark, slimy form, and they shed tears for the first time in untold memory.

Brandir harried the orcs, slaying one after the other, farther and farther beyond the camp line. It was long before he grew tired, but his leg hurt more than it had since he awoke in Paradise, he went on. He killed and slew, blood and spit and sweat splashing on his face, taking away the taste of Niniel’s kiss. 

The kiss sustained him as the sky lost its lights and darkness surrounded him. Above him the Menemalcar barely kept its stars, and after a long terrible silence, the stars turned red and then burst, coating everything in a dark red film that reminded him of the deepest darkest blood. He slew until there were no more and no one could be seen, no one... until a wanderer.

Brandir shut his eyes, knowing in his heart who it was. His rage took over. Revenge he’d snuffed out by sheer force suddenly burned inside of him again, and his wound returned black and smoldering under his armor, searing his skin. He hated it. He hated him. And worst of all, he loved him and wanted to be him, for though he was cursed he had everything Brandir wanted. 

“TURAMBAR!”

Brandir charged, throwing his sword aside and slamming his body into Turambar, and the ground shook.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit 2: The scene towards the end 100% inspired by Aquaman.
> 
> Edit 1: Strap in, folks. This ones a doozy. I've decided not to tag characters coming in or the violence warnings because kinda gives my dramatic ass away (there's A LOT going in this chapter). I do not know the definition of RELAX. We're all here for some good, good Turin/Neinor angst fam. And I got you. Blood and gore and general chaotic fantasy shit warning ;)

The world was red. The sky darkened to nothingness and void of stars.

“Fight!” 

Brandir beat Turambar to his knees.

A tooth sputtered from the back of Turambar's throat when he coughed, choking on his blood. Brandir recoiled, but his rage was greater than his disgust. He did not stop. 

“Fight me, coward!” 

Turambar would not. He raised his arms against Brandir’s merciless onslaught.

“Please,” he whimpered through bloody teeth and swollen lips, both hands above him as he cowered and cried. Fallen tears cleared paths on dirt of his cheeks.

Brandir stopped, but not out of mercy. He beheld the ripped cloth Niniel had torn off her dress and wrapped around Turambar’s hand, on that sad day they took their lives. 

Turambar wore nothing else. His naked body was free of mark and scar, but for the single incision above his stomach where he had chosen to fall on Gurthang.

“He… help…p...,” Turambar sputtered as if discovering words. He crawled back and away from Brandir in fear, his hands up in supplication. “Help me. I am sorry. If I did you harm, forgive me, please.”

Brandir searched for the Turambar he knew in those grey eyes made red by the shattered stars. They were without rage, without tumult, without bloodlust. Most telling, they had not the steel hardened silence of Turin Turambar, a master of the quiet, his rage contained and masked to all, even those who knew him best. The man looking back at Brandir was innocent and his eyes were the same as Niniel’s in her darkness. Exact. Grey, but they shone bright crimson, taking in the Red Sky.

His healer's heart was torn as he stood to leave, but the terror in Turambar's eyes made him stop.

 _Damn you_. 

Far above them something stirred in the Red Sky and they both looked up in fright. And it was most strange to Brandir, when he looked back down, to see the strongest person he knew helpless and begging.

Turambar watched him with wariness but also with longing, for he had wandered far in the land alone, and knowing nothing Turambar sought solace, even from one who would harm him.

“Get up,” said Brandir curtly.

Turambar rose, uncaring of his nakedness. He was used to the cold and did not know shame.

“We will find a place to rest and then… then we will figure out what to do.”

Turambar was confused. “Rest?”

“Sleep. We do not need to, but we miss dreams, I think. So we rest and sleep. Like before.”

“Rest …”

“Have you rested at all since waking?”

Turambar shook his head. His weariness bore his shoulders down. “I have walked. I keep walking. And I search. I know not what I seek, but I must. When you started punching my face I decided you were not it.”

A smile came grudgingly to Brandir's face, but his death scar scabbed under his armor and clothes. He scratched the barest part of it on his shoulder.

“Do you know who you are?” asked Brandir. The answer was clear, but Brandir had to know if this was a physical ailment or a sickness of the mind. “Were you hit?”

Turambar did not know that either. 

Brandir did not want to examine him, but a healer treated all or he was not a true healer at all. His mother had taught him that. For her sake…. for her sake and Niniel, who would never forgive him if he left Turambar wandering forever alone...

“Your name is Turin,” he said. “I am Brandir. We are kin.”

“Turin,” he said, repeating his name, and for the first time in his life embracing it without the burden of its history. Then he frowned in confusion. “Turambar. That is what you called out to me.”

“Yes. Turin Turambar. That is your name.” Brandir stopped, remembering another name that Niniel sometimes called him, Mormegil. There were others whispered among the people of Brethil, but they were rumored, and at a certain point he was sure the children started making up names. In the end all called him Turambar. “As far as I know.”

“I have more names?”

Brandir was incredulous as well. “You needed them because you were pursued. I do not know it all, but your pursuer I knew. All knew him. He was a great Lord from ancient times with powers unseen here or there. The most ancient Dark Lord Morgoth.”

Turin blinked. “Did I hurt him? Is that why he pursued me?”

Turin waited for his answer, hanging on Brandir’s word, and when Brandir had no answer for him Turin's worry returned. 

Brandir had to be careful. Men with lost memories after war were dangerous when provoked too soon, and so long as they were unwilling to face their grief he could not help them.

“No,” Brandir told Turin. “Your family and mine, we all fought against him but… but no one hurt him. Except. There was a war. It was in ancient times. Long ago. Before there even was a Sun.” 

“Like now.”

Brandir swallowed hard. “Let us go. We need to head back.”

Turin was suddenly aware he could ask questions. “What is this place? The stars, they exploded like fire but not… not like fire and now everything is empty. Utterly empty.”

Brandir unclasped his cloak and threw it at him. “There are horses and clothes near.”

“Did you not hear me?” For the first time some of the old Turambar returned. He stepped forward, clutching the cloak hard, his naked body large and imposing as it ever was. And he grabbed Brandir and lifted him like a sack of feathers. “There is nothing here! I have walked forever. There is only this land and now it is crumbling away with us inside of it.”

Brandir’s fright came harsh and unbidden, and he remembered his death sharp as the blade itself when it cut him down, Turin’s eyes on fire to smite him.

Turin’s rage vanished as Brandir’s fear showed on his face. And he was ashamed. He released Brandir and stepped away.

“I… I apologize,” he said. “I have been alone for a long time. Please forgive me.”

Brandir kept his distance and they did not speak for a time.

Turin walked behind Brandir, looking about in suspicion at the trees and the animals that stirred suddenly from the branches and the dark in between. Then Brandir led him to a road, and he was wary of it. 

“Where does it lead?” asked Turin.

“Back home. To our people.”

“Our people?”

“Here they are,” said Brandir, rushing to a pair of horses, their mains dark and darker. 

Turin chose the black one, but he was entirely naked under the cloak. “How will I ride it?” 

Brandir Willed it. Clothes for Turin. Black ones. He pulled them from the leather pouch settled on his horse. To Turin they seemed to have always been there.

Turin was as a child, and as curious as one. “How is this all here? First the trees and then the animals. Then the road. Are you one of the Valar?”

And Brandir hated him more than before, for more than ever Turin looked like Niniel as he first beheld her on Haudh-En-Elleth. Turin’s wonder was pure and open and loving, willing to learn and to be lead.

Once again he waited for Brandir to answer, but Brandir’s rage returned swiftly and he did not have the power to mask it as Turambar did. “This is some cruel jest, isn’t it? That I should feel pity for you.”

But he did, he could not help it. Turin’s world was Nothing. His road Nowhere. His thirst Endless. His search Void. But it was his world. Turin had taken his own life and he wanted nothing in return and he was given nothing.

Turin looked away from Brandir and changed into his clothes in silence. His face was not as swollen as before, but neither did the hurts go away, but Turin was as accustomed to hardship as ever. He had stopped wondering things long ago, for his head pounded from deep within when he wished, as if someone beat a drum between ears, warning him to want nothing.

Their horses carried them at a slow trot down the road.

“You know of the Valar,” said Brandir after some time, when Turin’s silence became unbearable. 

Turin had known the stars, besides thirst and hunger. “Seven and seven and seven. Seven stars and seven kings-”

“-and seven queens,” finished Brandir. “I was taught that as well.”

“Were we raised together?”

“You were raised in Doriath. That is perhaps how you know.”

Turin stopped his horse. “Menegroth.”

Brandir stopped also. “Are you remembering?”

Turin saw tapestries of battles and helms alight. Dragons in colored glass. But then his head pounded and he was back in the Red Lands on the road to who knew what. He had forgotten roads, forgotten there could be many of them, and they frightened him, not knowing where they could lead. 

The stars were his only comfort, for they were known to him and he followed them, hoping they were what he sought, but they were gone now. 

“Seven stars. I followed them in my darkness. The Valar are not here but... Nessa was my favorite.”

Brandir was quiet. “She was fast. Do you know the others?”

“Yavanna. Este. Varda.”

“Any kings?”

“Aule. He is married to Yavanna.”

Brandir shook his head and almost smiled, his interest for lore overtaking him. _Perhaps Melian had raised Turin more than Thingol_.

“Strange,” said Brandir. “That you should know them so clearly.”

And Turin did know them, clear as day. Yes. 

Nessa was his favorite, and Yavanna and Este and Varda. He’d learned of them first. Tulkas! Tulkas married Nessa, and they were the happiest and heartiest. 

Ulmo of the waters. Lorien of dreams. And Mandos of the dead. 

He knew them all and his heart lightened, remembering the sunlight on his face on a morn, but then, in a fell rush, all made him sad too, and he hated that he was in truth in a place of endless waste. A shadow fell on him and his head pounded again as he tried to remember Menegroth, but he could not and he said nothing.

Brandir let Turin alone and he rode ahead, coming to what seemed like a clearing but was in truth a wide circle with tall trees and no road leading out. Brandir bade Turin turn back, but the road behind them vanished.

Turin urged his horse around the circle many times. Brandir remained in the middle, umoving.

“This place is accursed,” said Turin. His hand was at his belt and there was a sword there. His horse moved with him and felt his discomfort. “There are men. We are surrounded not just by the trees.”

Turin unsheathed the sword, his other hand bringing his horse closer to Brandir, and it seemed to Brandir Turin’s horse was larger.

“Have I ever fought before?” asked Turin.

“You may say that.”

Brandir raised his hand at their likely ambush party. 

“Halt!” He called. “I am a friend. What you want, you may have, but if you do not let us go you will rue this day.” He stopped, thinking, and maybe he was still bitter yet. “Do you know who this is? Do you see his Black raiment? Do you see his Black Sword? This is Turin Turambar!”

Turin’s eyes widened. “This is a regular sword. It only looks black under this light!”

“Shut up,” said Brandir through his teeth.

The trees stirred and through them emerged a circle of armed men donning every kind of weapon and armor from regions near and far. Men with skin darkened by travel and eons under the Sun. The Easterlings many were and many without horse. All were to fight them.

Their leader came forward on a white stallion. He was of age with Turin and Brandir, his clothes wood worn, except for his cloak. Even in the Red glow it shone green, as did the green leaf clasping it together, it’s veins lined with silver. Turin’s eyes fell on the man’s round shield. Emblazoned on it was a magnificent tree with branches spreading high to covet seven stars. Under the Red sky it seemed as if bleeding.

“The Faithless have waited,” he said, and he bowed to Turin and Brandir. “I am Boromir of Gondor. Are you truly Turin Turambar? The Black Sword.”

Turin held his head high at Boromir, not knowing the history of his name, but proudly he took it on. “I am.”

Boromir looked at him with great reverence. Turin urged his horse to the men making the circle and when he saw that all looked on him the way Boromir did, as if he were a wraith long awaited, they began to pound their shields and their swords and started shouting up high.

“I am sorry,” said Brandir to Boromir. “I do not know Gondor.”

“Gondor is ways away. In Middle-earth.”

Brandir had only seen pieces of that map, of Middle-earth, when he’d sent his men on raids with Thingol, who sent Elves further south than any of the other High Elves, into Ossiriand, to meet with their Silver kin, before he closed Doriath’s gates forever.

“Who are these men, the Faithless?” asked Brandir.

“They are Betrayers. The Easterlings and many of your lands and mine. We are here to atone. But having betrayed our leaders, we refuse to make one for ourselves. I am merely their loremaster.”

Brandir bowed again. “We have much to speak of then.”

And so it was that Dorlas met Turambar on the Field of the Faithless, a vast endless camp of men and women who had done wrong to those they promised fealty. 

Dorlas knelt in front of both Brandir and Turin when the men had settled.

“I was… vain. I wanted to slay the dragon with the Black Sword and be known. Now my name goes on in shame.”

“None goes on,” said Turin, speaking without malice. He took Dorlas to his feet and touched his shoulder. “This is the Land of the Dead.”

He left them, head pounding with the word dragon, and he was thirsty suddenly. He wanted a river, for he heard one. A river loud. 

Dorlas meant to go after Turambar, but Brandir stopped him. 

“What is wrong with him?” asked Dorlas.

“He is in darkness,” said Brandir. 

“More darkness?” asked Dorlas, his heart full of pity for Turin Turambar like all others.

Dorlas looked down. He remembered clearly that day when he’d pledged himself to Turambar, vowing to slay Glaurung. Only he was overcome with fear and he turned back to Harleth, who had followed Niniel in search of her husband too. 

“We cannot help him,” said Brandir. “He’ll know all in time.”

Sooner than either thought, for this was not the World That Once Was. Men’s Will Ruled. And all that would be was made to be.

Turin wished to be free of his mind, free of the suffocating Red, feeling more than sadness and anguish. He was become angry. 

A cool breeze came from the north and he followed it to a cliff that spread into the greatest vastness he’d ever seen, black and red, but far. Mountains and valleys and hills spread before him, and the coldest chill made him shiver. He breathed deeply the open air, and it was pure relief to stand there, but still he was unsated.

Boromir came beside him, and he looked out and said nothing for a long time. Until: “It is true then, you are like Morwen.”

Turin took in a quick cold breath and he knew Morwen. His mother. Her stern face. Her black hair. _The road is hard, my son._

Nothing else.

Turin wanted to return to the neverending woods where there were no words and no hope. “All know my shames but me, so why speak? Unless you want to tell me of your Betrayal.”

Boromir nodded, bowing, and he said gravely with much hurt in his voice. “I was part of a Fellowship. I swore to protect our leader, but I was… vain. Like your man Dorlas. I forgot my honor and I let darkness take me.”

Turin was unsurprised, and that made him sadder. “You tried to kill him.”

“Yes.”

“I think I did the same to my kin, maybe,” said Turin of Brandir. “He thinks I am stupid too, besides dumb. I frighten him.”

“Do you wish to know why?” asked Boromir.

Turin wondered much of Boromir now, but secrets were precious and he saw that Boromir kept his close. Perhaps there were crimes unspeakable, betrayal beyond conception.

“Do I?” asked Turin to Boromir. His head burst with new hurts, but the question was asked in earnest.

Boromir smiled with sympathy. “Here all you want is yours. _We_ want to atone. Do you? Or do wish to run? Go. The land is yours. Run away with her, if that is your wish.”

Turin did not understand, not fully, but he wished suddenly to find a river, thirst now near to overtake him. “I hear water. I’ve never heard it before. Do you know where it is?”

Boromir bowed again, for Faramir wasn’t the only one who loved his ancient scrolls of lore in Minas Tirith. He led Turin Turambar of the Legends through the woods and Boromir pointed the way, but let him go alone saying before they parted, “The water will get louder.” For he knew of Niniel’s death, and the draw of Ulmo binding them all together.

Turin walked on and on, but this time his steps were not so heavy and he was not so afraid. The sword still in hand, he often put it in its sheath, but then he took it out again to hold. 

Boromir spoke true. The water became louder and louder, and he went for it, needing it as he struggled to remember more of Morwen, more of the dragon and Dorlas and Thingol and Doriath and Melian and Nessa. 

Turin stumbled to the source of the sound. A stream. Coming to his knees over it, Turin stuffed his face into the water and drank. Swooning, he fell at last into blackness.

“Here,” said a voice. Hands came around him. “Are you unwell? You’ll drown that way.”

And he lifted his face to look on his rescuer, and he knew her. 

Knew her faster than he knew Morwen and Menegroth, and she let him go, knowing him. 

Nienor stepped away, to the other side of the stream.

Turin felt full to burst, as if the stars in the sky had erupted again in his head, except in hard flashes of bright blinding white.

Saying goodbye to Morwen on the hills of Dor-lomin. Sitting on King Thingol’s lap. Running with Nellas. Hunting with Beleg. Amon Rudh. Finduilas dragged to her doom as he stood immobile. The sword’s cruel laugh as it entered him and drank his blood.

And the morning. 

That glorious morning the Sun shone on him and woke on her golden head. She was in his arms and she told him… 

Turin stumbled to his feet, and still he held his sword, and though he hurt everywhere he smiled at her. 

He knew her. All of her.

His wife.

His sister. 

Niniel.

Nienor.

Standing before him at last. 

His long search was over. 

The Children of Hurin could not move. 

They were as ghosts, one haunting the other, and they wished never have to known the other, for their love consumed them like a great fire unquenchable, taking all.

Nienor's army came up behind her, Elinell leading them with a bow ready. In response the Faithless made themselves known on the other side of the stream, behind Turin.

All sense left Nienor and she could not command. 

“Elinell?” called out a voice from the Faithless.

Elinell set down her bow as a shadow emerged from behind Boromir. “Gorlim?”

A man stumbled as Turin did, his eyes full of tears.

Elinell met Gorlim in the middle of the stream, and they hugged and kissed and held each other, Gorlim pleading for forgiveness, sorry for betraying their people to Morgoth. And she did not care. She kissed him and held him tight, her rage dying inside of her.

Turin and Nienor watched them with longing in their hearts. 

Then Nienor’s stomach began to rumble, the child inside her kicking.

And soon she was in labor.

It was Harleth, wife of Dorlas and sister of Hunthor, who took charge as the midwife, and together with Brandir she set a keep for Nienor. All waited as the screams echoed through the camps, their hearts breaking for her who had suffered most under Morgoth’s Shadow.

Many hours and much hardship later, the child was born, but he was quiet.

Nienor was pale and sweating. “Turin… why isn’t he crying? I can’t hear him.”

Turin took her hand and shielded her from the sight of he knew not what. “The midwives have him.”

“I must see him.”

Whatever strength she had left wasn’t enough to get her up. All of her body hurt, and she was both hot and cold and swooning, descending into darkness yet floating towards light. She thought she had known pain.

“I won’t survive death a second time I think,” she said.

“You have survived worse. So have I. So will our son.”

 _Our son_. 

Turin caressed her, taking the sweat off her brow, and her hands he held by his chest. He was angry more than he was afraid, and it showed on his hard, stern face marked with bruises, the tears in his eyes betraying him. One of them coming down a black and blue swell. Inside the keep in candlelight they looked on eachother under the yellow light instead of the Red, and they were astonished, seeing both a stranger and a mirror.

“Who did this to you?” She asked, her hand going from his chest to his face to touch his split lip.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said, taking her hand back.

Nienor smiled, but her heart was broken. It was the last pain she felt as her body went numb, and she did not mind it at the last. “I always thought you’d be fae. Even before the curse.”

Turin cried quietly, his jaw clenched in fury. All the hurts done to his house seemed a small thing to Nienor wan and pale before him. 

He did not know what to say to her.

He was sorry. He meant never to harm her. He loved her. He loved her deeply, fiercely, and he always had. 

He would give his life if he could. He did. She had.

“All I ever wanted was to find you,” he said, his words unburdened, for they were truth, bare and honest. 

“You did,” she said, strength leaving her. “Nothing stopped you.”

And Turin laughed hard, though he did not mean to and he did not want to. “Nothing stops _you_. You are the Child of Hurin. He who looked into Melkor’s dark heart and did not yield. That is the fire within you.”

Nienor shut her eyes. “Life again, I can not bare it.” Absolute pain or absolute nothing. Was there not succor? “We are hemmed in this land, you and I,” she said, echoing the words he spoke to her before he sought Glaurung that last fateful time, when she begged him not to go and their fates were sealed. “I thought I could fight. I did.” Her eyes filled with tears. “It’s taken our child. Twice over. In life and in death.”

“No,” Turin urged. “Rest. Rest and hope. _I_ will fight for us. There is nothing else I fear. Nothing else can harm me anymore. Nothing.”

“You lie. The Son of Turin haunts you already.”

“The Son of Nienor I love, as I love his mother, living and dead and beyond. Thrice beloved.” 

He kissed her softly, tasting the salt of their tears on their lips, and he called her wife, but in a whisper he urged her, saying, “Rest, sister. Rest.” 

Brandir watched Turin and Nienor from the shadows, watched as they kissed and held each other, their son fighting for his life, their curse stopping them from the great love they held for one another. And he cursed Morgoth to death and nothingness.

He waited for the midwives to finish their surgery, removing mother from child, and as the expert women turned to the doom of a newborn child that did not wail, Brandir Willed into Being a large basin of warm water for them to clean the baby and another for Nienor. 

Harleth cleaned the newborn and set him on his back, reaching a curved finger to release something caught in the boy’s throat, and once free the boy coughed, making the entire room go silent.

Brandir stood next to Harleth and marveled with her when he examined the boy, for the boy’s heart beat fast and hard as a newborns should. The first heart he’d felt and heard since he awoke in the strange place of dead men whose bodies were as caverns inside.

Then Brandir smiled as he looked closer at the mop of thick hair on the baby’s head. Candles above them made the wet dark brown glow bright white. The boy had golden hair, like Nienor. Like Hurin, his Grandfather.

Nienor need not tell Turin what to do. He was fast to his child.

Brandir went slowly to Nienor not to alarm her. He cleaned her with care and covered her with blankets and held her hand gently after, glad that she squeezed back hard. They did not say a word to each other, but watched Turin, or rather his back, seeing little and expecting all.

Turin reached for his son, and he stopped and looked at him instead. A small babe, barely the length of his forearm. The curse marred his thoughts, and memories of old came to him in waves of dread. All he had touched died.

They boy had yet to open his eyes, but he was fighting against the bundle he was constrained in and he got out of it, making Harleth shake her head. 

“He’s like you,” she said, shoving Turin to wakefulness. She saw in Turin the fear not of a first father, but the fear of the curse that had filled their hearth tales at night. “Go on, Lord,” she said, and she pushed him again to the babe. 

The tale of the Children of Hurin riddled her, but she cared only that the child was alive and that he was blameless. 

Turin tickled his son’s wide curve of a tummy and the boy’s tiny sausage hands grabbed one of Turin’s large fingers hard, bringing it to his mouth for a toothless bite. Then he caught hold of the cloth Nienor had wrapped around his palm that had somehow never come off.

He pulled at it and could not get it undone, and he laughed softly, and he tried again. When he failed again, he puffed out of his nose, and he laughed again, louder than the last. The boy tried one more time. 

Crying silently, Turin let it go, and his son held the ripped cloth and laughed, knowing he had won it despite knowing nothing. In triumph the boy laughed more and held the ripped cloth tight in his little grip and always he kept it to the end of his days. 

The child’s laughter rang through the camp and echoed through the empty Void and through the Circles Beyond, all the way to Arda and to the hidden realm of Aman, reaching the ears of one whose thought was turned always to pure joy, which was becoming rarer as the ages wore on and Men and Elves and Dwarves found new reasons to despair.

Tulkas, the youngest of the Valar, heard the Grandchild of Hurin’s laughter as a single note, and its innocence and beauty and joy wound to his thought. With Nessa his wife he sped towards the laughter and found the dead Beyond the Circles of the World, beyond Arda and the Void, the place unseen in their thought when first the Ainur sang with Illuvatar and they made the world that was foreseen in the vision of their song.

And they, the youngest of the oldest Powers, stood atop a Mountain of Shadow that was not Darkness. Tulkas and Nessa saw that it was the Will of the Children, for they feared all Beyond and could not conceive anything therein and so encircled their lands with nothingness. Never holding such power, they made the sky dark and red and wide, and they waited and brooded and kept to them the hurts of their old lives, but they could wait no longer. All who had lived and died through the ages were summoned. Tulkas and Nessa did not know to what purpose, but they were hearty and their powers great for the undertaking of new and wondrous thing. 

Tulkas and Nessa made themselves known to Turin and Nienor and their son, who was the single living soul amongst the unumerouable dead in the Red Lands.

The Valar bowed to them who had endured much hardship from one of their own, and the Cursed Children bore no grudge, not in their stern northern faces, beautiful but worn with grief, nor in the fires of their hearts where the darkest secrets burned. They bowed with respect to the Valar, welcoming their light over their stretched and burdened bodies, and the Valar beheld the Cursed Children with much kindness and healed them.

Turin and Nienor named their son Lalaithan Labadal, which was _Laughter_ , in honor of their sister Urwen, the first Child of Hurin Melkor took from the world. And Labadal was _Clubafoot_ , for the boy kicked the massive bare chest of Tulkas with his little pink foot when Tulkas jokingly pulled at the ripped cloth Lalaithan would not part with.

In that moment Turin and Nienor worried for their son with the heart of new parents overcome with unknowing, but then they did not worry, for they held Tulkas and Nessa in high honor, and their light was soothing, their laughter calm as the softest of breezes finally come after a hot wet day, and Turin and Nienor wished for more joy if it was possible, for they had it seldom except when together and long ago, at different times, with Sador. And they loved Sador with a pure love that came from the hearts of trusting children unwary of the world, and to them always Sador was proof of the valor of Men. 

When they told Sador of the child’s name he held Turin and Nienor and he cried. He alone of all, Valar and Elves and Men, did not feel shame for them, and he called them his little younglings, as Morwen once did, and became the fourth bright fire in their Will against Melkor.

Tulkas held Lalaithan and loved him. Wanting to right the wrongs of Melkor, Tulkas wished to see the joy in the boy thrive and spread beyond in the vastness of the unknown to come. He promised Turin always to watch over Lalaithan, as Ulmo chose and guided Tuor his kinsman. As Melkor chose and guided Turin and Nienor.

Nessa promised Nienor the same, and after the making of New Arda it was Nessa Lalaithan would seek and race and take council with most, for she made him fast, faster than the deer and faster than Tulkas, faster than Hurin his Grandfather who did not tire. 

And though Lalaithan knew Sador only briefly, he was enamored with him much as Turin and Nienor were as children, and he took Labadal as his first name when grown to manhood, for it confounded all. He laughed hard when others met with him. Labadal, the Clubafoot, the Trickster Born of Light and Dark, was in truth the beautiful woodsman Lalaithan, the Lover of Life and Succor of Woes, whose legend said he wrestled with Tulkas in utter darkness as a child and laughed and won. Lalaithan Labadal, whose parents were the doomed Turin and Nienor, and his heart was ever full of pity and reverence for them who chose not their curse. And when his name became his doom he proved in truth their child, caring not to be lame. He was called Labadal in truth and thence his greatest deeds were done, but that is another tale for another time from ages yet to come.

At his birth Tulkas bade Lalaithan’s eyes open at last. Big grey eyes stared back at huge bright ones of every shade and together they laughed, him who knew all and him who knew nothing, and their laughter was their song, the first note of Illuvatar’s Last Theme, soon to swell into a great symphony.

The note of Tulkas’s thought echoed across Arda and Beyond, awakening the Valar’s slumber, their long rest to quiet their jealousy of Man ended. Hearing they woke and they sought the singers of the new Theme in the Land of the Dead. They knew the thought of Tulkas, who never despaired and laughed at all, but they did not know the Stranger named Lalaithan, whose name rang in new melodies unheard and unthought, for he was borne a bright light within the utter darkness of Melkor.

Such was the joy of Lalaithan, the Grandchild of Hurin, unknowing of any evil or marring, that it sought for that which made him Be, and his note spread through the wide dimensions of existence, reaching even to the Doors of Night where a sliver of its echo breached a path into Melkor’s ageless prison.

And in his long endless exile he heard the song and raged inside, knowing Lalaithan for what he was, the child of Turin and Nienor, the Abomination of Arda who was never to be born, but be a grief to the Children of Hurin for all time. And he hated Lalaithan so fiercely that his fire fueled him free. Melkor broke his chain and seeking the single note he opened the Door of Night to a Red World of pure Will where things were not as they once were. 

He laughed, free at last, but not free of his malice. 

Time Immeasurable alone in Empty Nothing turned Melkor’s rage feral. Once free he called forth Balrogs and Dragons and Goblins and insects the size of eagles and spiders that shifted shape and vines to twist the feet into the hot coals of Ea. And he called forth wolves of all shapes and vampires and hounds. He sounded his horn for the Maiar who were wary of immortality and offered them a battle. Come what will! 

Last of all his called forth the First. The Great Worm. Glaurung. And all of his sons and their sons, Ancalagon and Smaug, followed him to the Red Lands. He called to him the Orcs who found no relief in Nienor’s mercy, and they sought again the Darkness and a Lord who would tell them what to do with their rage, but it was marked that not all Orcs took the summons. 

Spending his power into his creatures, Melkor had no choice but to take the form of a Child of Illuvatar, and it was a mark of his waning strength to be tethered to a body so tangible, but the master of lies lied then to himself, and he saw only beauty and majesty in his form.

He commanded all to strike every man, woman and child, breathing or not, but to him they were to leave the Children of Hurin and their Abomination, whose laughter echoed in his thought. 

Melkor raged more fiercely as time passed, for his thought pierced back not the Lay of Lalaithan. Nevertheless he sang, and it was unlike the challenge of fire and ice he set forth eons ago against his brothers and sisters. This new song came from eons of exile and it it he wove a quiet, ugly madness, weariness and hopelessness, dreariness and dread, the power of a million ants crawling on the skin.

Nienor, who was born Lamentation and known it all her life, beyond death, was the first to hear the echo of Melkor’s song and for her people she took its echo, which was as nothing to her now. She feared him not and his dread song made her think instead of making her sad.

Creatures foul and rank and deep, of Darkness borne in Melkor’s thought, none they feared for none was more terrible than their master. Glaurung Nienor saw in her mind’s eye, his belly she felt moving the very land she walked, and she thought it was foolish of Melkor to remake him for it made equally foolish things come to her mind.

Nessa was fast beside Nienor. “That is a dangerous thought,” she said with a smile, for she approved heartily of impulsive decisions made by the fearless.

“I cannot go alone,” said Nienor.

“I can only help you,” said Nessa.

Nienor breathed deeply. She was outside of the keep where she had given birth. Inside Turin slept and Lalaithan slept on his chest. Tulkas watched over them, waiting for the child to wake and laugh again so they could sing.

“How?” asked Nienor, before she was thrust to the Outer Rims of the World and into the Void.

It was a dark place, darker than black, and if Nienor had not experienced the Curse of Morgoth and known his Darkness, she would have succumbed to the Nothingness, but she rose and waited and before long there beheld a dozen shiny eyes that reflected her wan face.

“Seek… you… me….” echoed the slow rumbling coarse voice of a woman.

Nienor’s nose itched, a rank smell making her sick, but that was naught compared to her previous hours in labor. “I do.”

“Why?”

Steadfastly, she replied, “I wish to ride you. To strike fear in the heart of my enemy and his army.”

A laugh came from the dark, echoing, and the dozens of eyes blinked in intervals strange. “Why…. would I… help… you?”

“Because my enemy is yours. And you seek vengeance as I do. Promises were made to you and they were broken. He who broke them has returned after uncounted memory, and returning I bet your life against his. Melkor.”

The Void rumbled at his name, then it quieted.

“Will… I… be…. set … free?”

Nienor waited a moment, choosing her words carefully. She would not lie. “If you help me, I will speak for you, but I cannot judge. Where we go from this world, I do not know.”

“Any world… any world better than Darkness. But I… cannot. The light…. it blinds. It hurts. Within. Without.”

The world was red and dark beyond and she knew little of its making, but Nienor had never been more sure in her life of what to do. Now that Lalaithan was with her. And Turin… waiting...

“Look into my thought,” said Nienor. “See this new world and its darkness made of Man. Like me you are a thing changed by Melkor and time. I was of Light and Darkness came to me. You were of the Dark and in you is the Light of a thousand jewels and the Two Trees. 

“Come with me, Ungoliant. Unleash the Unlight! Let it go from you at the last. And when my brother has Melkor at his Black Sword, we will show the Lord of the Shadows true Darkness, and he will know terror as we have known it and we will smite all of his work and his body and soul and thought. With you at my side, with me, with _us_ , he will know he is truly alone.” 

Ungoliant’s throaty, coarse laughter filled the Void, and she revealed herself to Nienor, her dozen eyes emerging to reveal hundreds of them on a face wide and expansive, curving leathery and wet with hairs thicker than Nienor herself. Most magnificent of all were her legs, eight spread tall as trees and thicker, holding up a body grand enough to shadow mountains. 

Nienor stared up in awe. After fear swept through her, she met Ungoliant’s countless eyes.

The massive ancient spider made a harsh sound of swallowing, clearing the roughness of her throat, for she had not spoken to another being for years beyond count.

“Vengeance will kill you, child,” said Ungoliant.

“I fear nothing. Everything was taken from me. Everything.”

“And from me,” said Ungoliant, Lammoth still echoing in her ears. The thick hairs fumed above her eyes in front of Nienor’s face, and her eyes all shut in the first motion they made together all at once. “When you call, I will come, but.... I smell your fear.” Ungoliant, sniffed. “Fear is folly.”

Nienor breathed hard. “One I have, as do you.”

Ungoliant understood. “I fear… betrayal. That is why. No love. No friends. No thralls. No betrayal. Alone. Alone. _Alone_.” She sighed deeply, her breath foul, but her heart bare. “Always. Hungry. For all things.”

Nienor swallowed hard and she spoke the truth, which hurt her some, for it was not for Lalaithan she was afraid. “I fear my love. It is worse than death loving him, and yet I do. And… and I would do it again. All of it.”

Ungoliant reached into Nienor’s thought and knew her life and her darkness and her shame. In her blood was the taint of Melkor’s curse that was never to leave her, not so long as she loved whom she loved. And Ungoliant learned what Melkor refused to in his exile. Pity for those weaker than oneself.

“Then you are blessed with that which most do not know,” said Ungoliant. “Death is the gift. The great gift. I have sought death for a million million years here… in the Void… and the Valar I have not seen, but this I know, too, in the wisdom of my loneliness. They crave it now more than ever. They are weary. They will come as I will come. And perhaps when I die, making right the many wrongs of my immortality, I will not be alone.”

Already loyal to her, Nienor said fiercely, “You will not.”

“Return and rest,” said Ungoliant, who had now within her boundless patience.

“We must go now,” said Nienor.

“I must think.”

“Think?! We go for Melkor now!”

Ungoliant let free some of her true power, and it was as a hard wall of rank air, sending Nienor back, cracking her back that was healed yet remembered the agony of childbirth.

“Your pride is lovely to behold, Nienor Niniel, Daughter of Morwen, but I must think. I must think on how I will eat him. Little by little perhaps, or all at once to keep in my belly for centuries. Hmmmm…. You need rest. The first and last to ride on me must not be weak.”

“I am not weak,” shouted Nienor, rising to her feet, though they wobbled from the strain of moving too fast. 

“Your body can weather hardship, it is true, and you are mad to wander having just passed a child through it, but your mind is clouded. Return, I say. Think on what you ask. And fearing nothing, neither should you fear your love for your brother. Melkor and many besides him have worked hard to sunder Nienor Niniel from Turin Turambar, and in that sundering fell all of Beleriand but for the single stone.

Nienor breathed hard, listening not to the wisdom of the ageless. “Wait, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“I waited all my life.”

“You are not alive. You are of this world now. Like me.”

She _had_ to convince the creature to go with her. She wanted Melkor dead before he could ever touch Lalaithan. “I lied.”

Ungoliant laughed, her echo shaking Nienor to her bones. “Indeed.”

“I fear one more thing.” Nienor looked down, ashamed. “I am afraid of… of hurting my child. I have brought him into this cruel world. Yet I wanted him. How can I face him? How can I lie to him about this place? About who he is.”

“I do not know. A child I had also, many children in truth, but one I suckled to my breast longest and cared for, in my own way. And still. I left her to starve. She is lost to time. Dead, most likely. If you wish this, leave your child.”

Nienor was glad Ungoliant was prone to moving and had missed her reaction of disgust. Yet she had thought of leaving, in a moment of deep shame, when she was laying in her fever and Brandir kept checking her, telling her Harleth had to come back and do more surgery on her.

“He may be safer without me,” said Nienor. “Both of them.”

“Without you their fire is weakened and yours also.”

“Melkor has returned,” said Nienor, her heart sinking, cold as north. “His curse follows us. The longer he lives the more his power grows, and Lalaithan will have been born exactly as I was, during war and strife as his father is taken.”

Nessa entered the Void, her arm coming fast and smooth around Nienor to comfort her. 

She looked about in wonder at the emptiness of the Void, remembering it clearly, for it was once Everything and she and Tulkas were born there, from Illuvatar’s thought. She made Nienor look at her and made her hear too, and for a moment Nienor quieted and beheld a glimpse of the vastness of the Void and the creatures waiting still in thoughts foreshadowed. And briefly she saw the truth of Ungoliant, a shadow great from places unknown, but still merely a shadow, as all things were, coming from nothing. Nessa removed her enchantment from Nienor and the woman looked on Ungoliant differently thereafter.

Much dread in the End of Days came from the spider’s foul crime in the Beginning of Time. She drank from the fountains of diamonds in Valinor, ate the animals and trees and gems of Aman, and she suckled the Two Trees dry. Nessa was eager to see Ungoliant meet Tulkas again, for her husband had often wondered if things would be different if he had taken on Ungoliant instead of running after Melkor when he stole the Silmarils from Formenos at the same time as she satiated her boundless thirst from the waters of the Valar.

But that thought was pointless. 

Nessa did not dwell on what was behind her. She heard Ungoliant speaking with Nienor, who she did not devour instantly, and all she heard bode well.

Nessa acknowledged Ungoliant, the great enemy of the Valar, the single Being to hinder them, and Ungoliant bowed her great head to Nessa in return.

“You are still here, I see,” said Nessa, much impressed the great spider could hide for so long undetected.

“No one has come to look for me,” answered Ungoliant with something like mirth and pride for going unseen by the light of the Valar and the dark of Sauron, who had endured when Melkor had failed.

They would see each other again in Valinor on the battlefield, fighting against Melkor’s menagerie of demons. All trembled as Nienor rode Ungoliant, her wide legs trampling Balrogs and Dragons like flies. And even the Valar gasped as she released the Unlight fully, shielding the Dead from Melkor’s Darkness, which was made a paltry gray against it. Who Ungoliant met next, that comes later into the tale.

Nienor was yet unfinished with Ungoliant in the Void, but Nessa brought her back to the Red Lands. 

The mortal woman frowned at her, but Nessa was unmoved by her anger, much impressed instead by her thoughts. Nienor alone knew of the extent of her Powers, and she had foresight to seek Ungoliant, who had not devoured herself as long thought. 

Nienor walked away, towards her keep, and Nessa, who shared all with Tulkas, advised her to do the same with Turin.

“You must tell him.”

“He will know,” said Nienor without turning.

Entering her keep, Nienor stopped and quieted as she watched Turin cradling Lalaithan close, rocking him back and forth. He set the sleeping babe down gently in the crib Sador had carved for him. 

“I am afraid I will hurt him,” he said to her in a whisper when she came to stand by him and both looked down at their child.

Nienor caressed the boys face with a trembling hand. Lalaithan squirmed, but he smiled quickly, and thinking him waking, Nienor took her hand back. Turin quieted him again, saying nothing but caressing his body, so small it made Turin’s hand seem gigantic.

“You say nothing of my not holding him,” said Nienor.

Turin caressed Lalaithan’s belly and the babe took his finger, Nienor’s torn cloth wrapped forever around his wrist.

“Morwen was the same,” said Turin without judgment. “I will hold him until you want to.”

Her heart warmed at his words. Many had looked on her strangely when she chose not to carry Lalaithan or nurse him. When first she held him she was overcome with joy, but swiftly it was a joy diminished by immense sadness. And though Tulkas and Nessa healed the hurts of her body, her very Being ached, as if she were broken glass about to shatter at any moment.

Her hands trembled. “My hands are cold,” she said, and with much gentleness, Turin took them again and held them against his chest, warming them in seconds. 

A breath later she was in his arms, his mouth on hers, and she pulled him closer and deeper into a hard kiss that bore none of the tenderness of their first. 

He came away, desperate for her and uncaring if she knew it, but her tears stayed his hands. Her anguish burst forth.

“I have brought him to this world to suffer. That is all there is,” she said, war in the back of her mind.

Turin held her. “No, no. Nienor. No. I do not believe that. Our son is safe. He is safe. Tulkas will make him strong and Nessa will make him fast and in him is our father’s fire and our mothers, and he will be gentle, like you, and he’ll never know war.” He became stern again, steel and fierce. “When we ride against Melkor we will destroy him and Lalaithan will live in a new world never knowing his name. He is safe. He is safe.”

Nienor gripped him, and she stopped her tears. “We ride.”

Turin fought the urge to keep her and Lalaithan hidden and safe, but that had not worked for the greatest of the Elven Kings, or for the Valar in their halls of diamonds, or the Petty-dwarves forgotten on Amon Rudh, or the wandering outlaws, shattered and reforming like a beating heart refusing to die. 

Or like their mother, who waited and waited and waited and did not swallow her pride. 

“You will not send me away,” Nienor said. “Or our son. I’ll kill you, Turin, I will if you do this.”

“You and Tulkas,” he said with a smile. “And Nessa maybe.”

In the silence and respite of their woes, they came together again and kissed softly as they used to, but as their wanting deepened they knew again their shame, and they came apart feeling it anew and they broke away.

Tulkas and Nessa marveled at the Children of Illuvatar in the Spring of their Will. 

Hundreds upon hundreds danced about great circles of fire and many thousands more wandered, meeting with other tribes of the Fallen Through Time. Countless tribes there were, but three were the greatest, the ones all others revered for their legend and their numbers, three tribes as it once was with the Edain in the Elder Days.

There were the burned men of the Bragolladrim, Men of Sudden Flame, the Nirnaethain, Men of Tears, an entire generation gone from the world. And finally the Wrathful, the largest company, made of the men who had Fallen beside the Valar in the war that sundered Beleriand. They were utterly fearless men, the Wrathful, greater even than the Faithless, who sat apart, awaiting the final battle to prove their worth. The Wrathful brought down all Balrogs and dragons, save those that escaped into the depths. They protected the ages to come from terrible ruin. 

Happiest were the children who had never grown to manhood, who were taken as slaves or killed swiftly and never saw the light again until their awakening in the Red Lands. To them Lalaithan was as a faery, come anew, to bless them, and they called out his name as a blessing.

All rejoiced, moved by love of newfound life and the song that rang in their hearts, the song of Tulkas and Lalaithan that was the first note of hope since the Sun and Moon were no more. All was well. All were happy. All danced and sang. All but the two who wanted to sing and dance most, deep in their hearts where other secret longings burned.

Tulkas and Nessa were moved by this piercing longing, finding in it the ancient inescapable strand of mourning woven into the creation of Arda from the beginning of the world by Nienna, who cried for all the woes of the world before it was ever made. And they were ashamed, not for Turin and Nienor’s love, but for their kindred Melkor, who marred every aspect of that love so that neither of them would ever know any kind of happiness in each other, not as brother and sister nor as lovers or friends, without their Being torn utterly. Nessa and Tulkas sat like the Children, drinking ale close together by the fire, inspired by the men and women who touched and loved one another, using their great music to make other things great.

Deeply buried was the desire of the Children of Hurin. They sat apart, but did not wish it, and their eyes fell on one another without meaning to, and they understood one another as no others could.

Tulkas and Nessa knew Turin and Nienor’s minds and because they were the youngest of the Valar and the heartiest, the most like the Children of Illuvatar, they endeavored in their thought to help them. 

Nessa sped around the fires, stirring more to dance, and Tulkas shook their hearts with his laughter, stomping to force Turin up on his feet. Nessa came to Nienor and took her by the hands, so fast that Nienor could not contain her laughter, her first sounds of joy since waking.

“A match!” said Nessa when she came to a halt with Nienor in her grasp.

A loud roar went up amongst the people.

“Who will challenge me?” asked Tulkas.

His large bright eyes were set only on Turin. 

All laughed and called, “Turin! Turin!! Turin Turambar!!!” For he was their hero.

And Turin, for the first time in hs life, felt something like shyness. He had never heard his name shouted and revered. Not the name Hurin and Morwen had given him.

“Seconds ready!” said Tulkas, taking a long swig off his ale.

Nessa sped to Tulkas and a small path was made for Nienor to Turin. 

The people whispered as the famous brother and sister from song came together. They had seen Turin Turambar and they had seen Nienor Niniel, but never together in front of all, their son Lalaithan Labadal asleep and protected by the power of the Valar.

Nienor helped Turin remove his shirt. All became silent when they looked on one another and so intense was their longing they became still.

“Wish me luck, sister,” he said.

Nienor’s smile came unbidden. “Luck? For the Child of Hurin? Perhaps not in this life.”

Turin laughed softly, and his laughter filled her with joy, and it was a sweet pain. 

“Are we immortals?!” yelled out Tulkas.

Nessa threw an apple at his head. “Yes!”

Tulkas caught it before it hit his face and he ate it whole. Mouth full, he said, “Come on, Black Sword!”

Another roar went up and it followed Turin to the wider circle made around the largest fire, and he saw Dorlas and Harleth, and Boromir smiling and Androg too, and many comrades fallen.

Nessa and Nienor watched as Tulkas and Turin pummeled each other into the dirt. Rain began to fall and the two fought under a Red twilight marked with lightning. 

This was Man’s domain, outside the Circles of the World, and after a round Turin took Tulkas down in a thunderous crash. 

Turin raised his hand into a hard fist high in the air. “Day has come! Day has come!” His nails dug into his palm, making them bleed, and he cried louder, tears coming out of his eyes. He looked at Nienor and yelled louder, “DAY HAS COME!” The words their father had spoken in defiance of Morgoth.

Tulkas sprang to his feet and took up Turin’s other hand and with his power made Turin’s voice echo to the thousands and thousands. 

Those of the House of Hador raised their swords highest, echoing the words of Hurin before his capture in the Nirnaeth, before the Doom had fallen on his children. And those not of the House of Hador, those who heard the legend and mourned for Turin and Nienor long ages after their death, took their shame and weathered it for them, and let them have this moment of peace.

“Dance!” called Nessa. “Let us dance!”

The circles closed and all were as one, moving like an unstoppable current.

All but Turin and Nienor. 

Neither had been taught to dance and had danced only one other time before in their lives, at their wedding, a memory now marred. 

Destruction and death followed their every step and they long endured hunger and cold under Morgoth’s curse, so twisted did he make their lives and bodies, putting them through pain unimaginable, but worst of all was the sweetness of their gentler days. Slowly they came together, fearing the comfort that came when they touched. 

Turin put his arm around her waist and rested his hand at the small of her back. He pulled her closely, the heat of his bare chest filling her nose with a familiar soothing smell she pretended not to notice.

“I didn’t kill him, see,” he said.

“There is still time. Everything may yet go wrong.”

“It might.”

“It’s certain.”

“We are truly in End Times,” he said. Her eyes asked him why and he answered, “If Turin Turambar is the keeper of hope.”

“He is more than that,” said Nienor, staring long at his face and wishing to caress it, to kiss him as she did in the dark, when they were alone. “Mormegil. Neithan. Adanedhel. I knew of them all.” She swallowed down hard, forcing herself not to cry. “Turin I longed for most.”

“There is one more title I bear. The one dearest to me.” He pressed his head to hers and spoke it. “Husband.”

He kissed her cheek softly and said it again and again, until his lips met hers in a tender kiss.

Nessa and Tulkas bade Manwe wait a while, pass the night, before he sent Eonwe to guide the Dead to Valinor for the Last Battle. For Turin and Nienor they did this, because Illuvatar had spoken true. 

It was as he had said to Ulmo, Lord of Waters, who's loving works of water Melkor froze to blistering ice. Melkor, in all his hatred and malice, when first conceiving of the bitterness of frost did not think on the singular beauty of each fallen flake of snow, every one a wonder beyond his thought.


	4. Chapter 4

Her body shattered in the mouths of the Teiglin, Ulmo’s terrible waves crashing against the crags of teeth, washing clean Hurin and Morwen’s blood. The Lord of Waters brought to the shore her bones, and Osse picked up the pieces, a thousand of them scattered in sunken Beleriand, and he gave them to Nienna, her namesake, who wove her back together. Mandos of the Dead took her corpse and set her free in the waters of the Depths of Time. For Ea, if she wished.

 

-

 

The fires faded and the people vanished. Little by little all fell away until Turin and Nienor were alone, surrounded by tall trees swaying against a calm breeze, great leaning sentinels casting wide black shadows against the starless Red Sky. The Children of Hurin slowed their dance and stopped, but they did not break apart, unwilling to be torn so soon. 

Turin and Nienor drew their hands down each others arms, accepting they were alone, dreading they were alone, missing each other. Their fingers entwined. Awkward at first, because they did not look away from one another, but then carelessly. Pulling and pushing, slipping and holding, back and forth. A silly game of handsies, or their crude version of it. No one taught them to dance or how to play this game, but they were good at it like the dancing. 

Amidst a particularly embarrassing amount of fidgeting with more than a little pain and laughter involved, their hands aligned perfectly, palm to palm. They spread their fingers together, both long and strong, but his thicker and slightly larger, hers trembling.

Sweat cooled on his bare torso. Steam shimmered up from his shoulders where Tulkas’s imprints had yet to vanish. Huge white fingers like pillars streaked down to his elbows. Turin smelled of wood and earth as he used to, after he returned to Brethil. Those orc slaying hands woke her gently, let her down easily from horses, walked with her. They wrote out runes in the dirt to teach her to spell her name.

The more Nienor tried to forget, the more potent she felt the memories. Any moment Turambar and Niniel would come through the dark, from the past, hand in hand, and she would see them, stupid in their ignorance, but unafraid. 

“Are we going to stay here forever?” Turin asked her, bringing her back with the longing in his voice. “Like Thingol and Melian?”

Nienor smiled. Their hands came down and apart. It had to be done, to lighten their great burden. “Are we immortal?”

“Stopping death is close.”

“Too close for me.” 

Turin touched her arm softly to comfort her, and she smiled again. 

Could they use the veil of the dark again? Begin again? Time eluded them in the Red Lands. Was another beginning possible? Time had to be sorted out first. 

Had it been a day or a week? Did she labor for hours or was it the pain lengthening the minutes? Had she rested after? Slept at all? Did she need sleep? 

Nienor walked many hours when she arrived. Days maybe. No way to tell except to sense the time, like an element, like rain. Before the Red Sky, the Sun and Moon were fixed in their spheres, unmoving. A perpetual night and day. Turin’s wandering had been endless, he told her. Not weeks or months, but years on his bare feet, naked in the cold. Ellinell killed her orcs and found common cause with Brandir and his army, who were of many thousands. The Faithless found each other through the Ages.

“What if it’s everyone?” Nienor asked Turin. “More than thousands. Hundreds of thousands dead. We keep thinking of ourselves. Our kin, our camps. Our times. But the circles are vast, and Arda ancient with many ages of Men. There could be…”

Turin in his eagerness easily imagined it. “Millions?”

“The Lands of _all_ the Dead.” 

“Maybe we go to Mandos after here,” smiled Turin. “After Melkor is destroyed once and for all, Arda will have peace and so will we.”

They heard many tales around the campfires, meeting people from faraway places who knew much of them and of the Valar, of Mandos and the Elves and the History of Middle-earth. They spoke of Aman, far to the West, beyond Eressea, and of Middle-earth itself, far in the east, beyond the Blue Mountains and the many places the exiles of Beleriand escaped to during the years of the sundering, when Melkor was finally chained. 

What would he take with him upon his utter destruction? They knew little of time and less of the Dead Lands. It would take everything...

“We are not in Lorien now,” that much Nienor was certain. “Elven things don’t exist here.”

“There is one cloaked in green with a silver leaf at his throat,” he said. “Boromir of Gondor. He did not tell me how he came to it, but I recognize it. Beleg and Mablung’s guard wore them and I had one once. They cannot be stolen and they are not parted from their owner’s shoulder lightly. It has come to this place.”

Nienor had seen this green cloak and silver leaf from afar around the campfires. She did not know the man who wore it, but she knew the name. “Boromir? Our kin?”

“Named for House Beor. I do not know if _we_ are his kin. His was House Hurin, but not Hurin our father. These are men who died long after we did.” He stopped gravely, thinking of Boromir, for it was he who pointed Turin to the stream where Nienor found him. “Thousands of years. They know our names. They have our names.”

“Many do,” said Nienor.

And not all were as courteous as Boromir. 

-

Even in death jealousy festered. The Children of Hurin were hated not for their shame, but for the fame that followed them and the pride that kept high their chins.

Their great Powers came from Melkor. The lie spread ear to ear, along with the words _abomination_ and _unspeakable_. This wrath made a loud rancor in the minds of the discenters, stunting their Power and shielding them from the sadness of Turin and Nienor’s great guilt that they did not hide and could not hide. For none made them forget who they were.

Hurin and Morwen parted from the world caring not that they were grounded to dust. They had endured and found their children, in the end. Turin and Nienor would endure as much.

Avoiding one another to be decent folk amongst other decent folk, they came to the story of their lives in many different ways. They heard of Hurin and Morwen’s end and shedded no tear, caring not to be spectacles. Several versions they heard, some that included a vision from Manwe upon Tol Morwen. Others preferred Tulkas or Ulmo. They were glad either way, not to have to speak much except to affirm, deny or stay quiet.

No, Nienor had to say. She did not help cut off Glaurung’s head, though that was a lovely addition. Improbable, said many in protest. Niniel and Turambar came to Glaurung many hours apart, and they met their doom one after the other, at separate times. The lay did not work otherwise. Glaurung’s timing was crucial in this. 

Turin broke their visions of great leather wings and booms of fire when he told them the Great Worm was in fact an actual worm, a gigantic fat snake slithering with legs, like a lizards, sticking out. His fire was more molten lava than flame. A slithering rank mass with the most fey of eyes.

Was there even a curse at all? They heard many times. Could Turin and Nienor be forgiven? 

A fight broke out where cruel and unnecessary words were spoken. Fear of Melkor’s coming quieted the music and dimmed the fires. All was laid at Nienor’s feet. Lalaithan’s laughter brought the Valar, yes, and Melkor with it, and she would protect him before any of them. Nienor cared not for what they said.

“Nothing else is there to hinder me,” she told them whose thought bent unknowingly to Melkor’s dying discord. “Pain and grief we have here, that is true, and after a lifetime of it there is something cruel about the looming shadow of a second death, but these things portend nothing in and of themselves. Melkor was here at the first, and he is here at the last. He is coming and he remembers well his methods, more than we do, maybe, and he comes to do as he did before. To take. Take your mind and your new Power that you do not know each of you have. It is not mine alone, but that makes no difference to him. He is taking it now. Taking your loyalties from each other. And he will take again your kin and your friends, and he will make their screaming part of his music. My son, he will take also.

“That is his true power, I think. Taking that which he cannot make, that which is not his, and releasing it to further harm. Leaving only fear and despair, and taking that too, the bones of the dead and their ashes. He would keep these things for himself, in the end. Taking even from his thralls the freedom of death. Maybe once he believed his hatred just and deserved, but in the fulfillment of his cause he was merciless and heedless. He stopped only because he was stopped, not because he was sated. That is our enemy. A leech taking both sickness and skin.

“Here is the last I will say. I am not your Queen. I care not if you follow me. In truth, I would face this alone with my brother, but an eternity and the greatest armies assembled could not take Melkor from this world. So I do not begrudge those who would follow me and my brother. Yet vengeance is not mine alone and neither is it my only purpose. I seek to make use of this gift death. Yes, I know many of you are afraid of this place, coming after such grief and expecting even more, but Melkor who has given us nothing cannot have given us this. Melkor will strangle you with promises and with his other hand take your fire and all that you are. Then he will throw you aside and take another thrall and then another. You will die again for absolutely nothing.”

Turin watched her from afar with great pain, hearing every word, and she drifted away from the gathering around her and drank until Tulkas and Nessa roused the camp to wrestle and dance. 

-

“You blush,” he said, waiting for her to shove him away, but she didn’t.

“Everything is red or black,” she said quickly. “You do not know if I’m blushing.”

“I know my wife.”

“Niniel, you know. Nienor, you have never met.”

Turin stepped away and bowed to her. An Elven salute. Hand to the chest and spreading out. 

“My dear sister,” he said with much courtesy. “I forget myself. I am Turin Turambar.”

“You cannot be both,” she said, uncertain.

“Yet I am.”

The words were out of her mouth before she realized. “We must choose.”

 _Do we?_ Why did she say that? If Morwen in Dor-lomin felt the same agony and confusion as Nienor Niniel did in the Red Lands then her daughter had not truly known the depths of her mother’s grief. 

“Right now?” asked Turin, much amused.

“Yes!” She said a little too loud, smiling though her lips trembled. 

Turin laughed softly, thinking. Pummel bruises were clearing, the last of the cuts on his face healing. 

“Am I Turin, who searched for you for years? Who longed for you all of my days? Or am I Turambar, who found you and loved you?” He paused gravely. “And lost you...”

Nienor looked about at darkness surrounding them, at her hands, at her feet, anywhere but him, until it was impossible. 

Nienor cleared the space between them and drew her hands to his chest, grazing his death scar above his stomach. It stood out on his body, still pale under the Red. His breathing deepened, and she looked at him, all of her shivering when he held her again.

“I drank some ale and also some wine and Tulkas blessed it, but I do not think that is a good thing,” she said in a fast rush that made him smile. “For riding, later. When we ride. They put something in it, too, the Men. They are starting to realize they can make things happen. It is good so far all they want to do is get drunk. And I saw Nessa throw something in the fires that made them bigger, or maybe people just like fire a lot. They are… strange.”

“The Valar or the people or the fire?” asked Turin, the question a long ramble because he missed her and wanted her to talk and talk and forget she was melting in his arms. 

“Everything and everyone. Absolutely everyone.” She let out another deep sigh and came to it. “What are we doing? Now that the veil is taken from our eyes, should we not… try to stay away?”

“I’ll ask Tulkas to take our son away from us and then undo our marriage.”

“You’re not funny, Turin,” she said, hitting his bare chest and leaving her hand there.

“Everyone says that, and everyone, by your account, is very strange.” He was very, very serious when he added. “I think I’m very funny, _and_ I’m very useful with a sword.”

Nienor smiled. “Those are the only two reasons I married you.”

His very laughter echoed through her, fueling her fire, and he caught his breath when she said, “Turambar,” as her mind toiled in all the memories soon to fade. 

-

Turambar taught Niniel many things. He showed her Tol Brandir and the domain of the Kings. The Kings of the High Elves, and their friends, his people, the Edain. Niniel learned the differences between an orc track, a deer track and the paths of men and the clever way they obscured their footprints. If ever they were assailed and separated, she knew what to look for and which way to go, because he taught her the stars and the mountains. Turambar gave her a knife and did not grudge her a lesson or two. He showed her secret paths, off the roads and deep into the woods. For days they walked alone, hunting, naming flowers, sleeping in each others arms. 

Turambar told her of the Elven King’s son, Fingon, and how the Nirnaeth took him, as it had taken Hurin, his father, and Baldir’s father, Haldir, and she learned why the People of Haleth were only very old or very young.

 

-

 

Nienor scratched his death scar again, the very bottom of it where it was starting to scab, and she reached with her thought, and knew him suddenly, his eyes her eyes. She saw his endless wandering and his fear now that she was with him. She reached without moving and found memories of his life. 

Neck arched. Above him, above her. Two narrow cliffs about to kiss and a belly crossing them, blocking the sun, stank tar seeping from the moltened fire of its stomach, scaling skin formed to impenetrable armor. The First, though not the very first, that was Manwe and Melkor in the Void, and for Arda, Bombadil and Ungoliant. This was Glaurung, the First of the Dragons, father of the great winged banes of Middle-earth. 

Gurthang the Black Sword pierced high and took its much loved booty from the stink, avenging Nargothrond. A victory for the ages, but meaningless to he who dealt it. Gurthang soon thereafter tasted Turin’s flesh and let spill all his blood.

A sharp indescribable pain pierced Nienor, but then it disappeared entirely. She hit a thick wall that propelled her back into her own thought. Things she was glad to forget as Niniel.

 

-

 

Those babes Brodda could not make thralls after the twilight of the Nirnaeth were put out of their homes with their starving mothers, left to freeze in straw halls scattered throughout infested Dor-lomin. Nienor was safer under stone, but she remembered faces, gaunt and feral, in the shadows of barren House Hador. None remained for long, finding little more than the destitution they left behind. Morwen gave all that she had, but she was not kind.

The years waxed and waned, peril on all corners of the land, and the winters were hard. Brodda was harder, unpredictable in his boredom after many years in the dreary north. Months would go by without incident, giving Morwen time to gather news and build up her store. Then he’d round up a dozen. Outlaw, orc or strawhead, didn’t matter. He loosed arrows into whoever, outside their very gates that he would not cross. 

After she was nine, Turin’s age during the Nirnaeth, the year he was exiled to Menegroth and the year of her birth, Nienor saw no more children until Brethil. 

 

-

 

Turin’s scar throbbed against her fingers.

“It does not hurt,” he assured her kindly.

Sadness swelled within her and he would see it end, but unbidden came echoes of her death in his thought. Turin believed it to be another memory that was returning to him, but then he saw it in his mind, like a vision. He saw himself. Bent over, in the water, sleeping through the venom, and it was not his, this haze punctured by grief, but it became his. He became her.

Glaurung’s dark glinting eyes reflected back a stretched and cursed contortion of Hurin's daughter, his black heart releasing her with his last breath. He saw it. He saw Brandir urging for patience, his grief great and sorrow complete, for he could not follow fast enough with his lame leg and stop her. Her footsteps were heavy on the hard damp rock. Fog rose and swirled, cold and wet, hissing and rising from the crashing waters below. Darkness took her before the rocks shattered her.

Turin closed his hand around hers, bringing them where his heart would have beaten. He kissed them and tears swelled in his eyes. He breathed deep and returned to her.

Nienor smiled sadly, her beauty piercing him as it did when first he saw her on Finduilas’s grave, her naked body unmarred and bare to the elements. She was not naked in front of him now in the Red Lands, yet she shivered as before. They were exposed in a wide dark realm, waiting for an enemy of infinite patience. 

Neither of the Children of Hurin had learned patience willingly.

“I did not feel it,” she said of her fall.

“The first of many mercies.”

Turin kissed her, unable to comfort her with words. She withered into him, small and helpless. A moan escaped her throat to feed his lips.

“Turin,” she let out, whispering. “Turin, please.”

Turin stopped kissing her, but his lips ghosted over hers, nose softly brushing against her face. And he waited and waited and waited, patience forever his bane. Her mouth opened weakly, and he slid his tongue in, tasting.

Nienor spread her hand on his chest, a pathetic attempt to push him away, but the burning against her palm was soothing bright instead of searing hot, his scar throbbing like a heart. He wrapped his arms around her, spreading his hands up her back to run through her golden hair. And he held her neck, softening the tension all the way to her shoulders. And he kissed her, her lips and her jaw, her throat, her chest, his name on her mouth no longer a whimpering plea. She closed her arms around his neck and her feet came off the ground. 

For the first time since waking she felt relief. True relief. And it was deeper than the Void, more frightening, for it promised comfort and release, things the Children of Hurin long despaired the way others despired fire and flood. Turin breathed her in, face buried in her embrace, and a memory he had not yet fully grasped since coming to the Red Lands awakened in him. 

The morn. The sun. Her nakedness before him.

 

-

 

Turambar opened his eyes to blinding sunlight. Niniel had waited for him to wake, the furs barely on her beauty. A northerner, all of Brethil agreed. One accustomed to bitter winters, for she had survived alone and naked in the wild, forever some said. A fairy come to their Turambar, who they loved but avoided because of his grimness. She had put her spell on him.

Turambar grunted sleepily, turning to her in bed. He nuzzled against the long fall of her hair and breathed deep, kissing her shoulder, wondering if he would ever get tired of her smile. 

Niniel was not there for that. Not exactly. She grabbed one of his great shirts, slipped it on and straddled him, loudly insisting he rise. He did, in more ways than one, but he marked her not after she did not yield her body to his. Niniel was well contented. And strong as well. She held onto him just fine without his help. 

They were nearly of height, but he was wider and thicker, all of his muscle against her lithe, long body. Turambar carried as many as three Nienors daily in his work for Brethil, so he walked easily about their bedroom, pretending she was not climbing him like a squirrel.

She stilled her laughter and feigned boredom, kissing him little bites and kisses to block his view and tempt him, and because she loved to kiss him when he was being a grump, especially a fake grump because he was nevertheless well mannered and gentle. 

Niniel laughed at him sometimes, not out of malice, she had none and knew none in Brethil, but out of a kind of reverence that was not worshipful. She delighted in him and learned the secrets of his scowls and his anger, all a veil to the world save herself. She wanted to know all he knew and why so she could be strong and loved, and she wanted to be strong enough to love him, for she saw sometimes that darkness he claimed to have passed. She would fight for him, if he asked.

Turambar met her lazy gaze, the window behind her wide open, the sunlight setting her hair aglow in a brilliant white sheen. Sleep left his eyes and he squeezed tenderly between her shoulder and neck where he held her. She rose with him when he took a deep breath and clenched his jaw. Turambar pushed her hair aside with his nose and kissed her shoulder where the shirt had slipped off her smooth curve. 

His voice, rough with waking, sounded like a purr from a languid, bored wolf letting a meaty morsel of a rabbit prance in his sights for its daring. He wished very much then to pounce, zero mercy, but he was not a wolf in that moment, standing tall with his wife in his arms.

“What do you want, little squirrel?”

Niniel, with much hardship, pulled away from her husband and his slow tender kisses, meant to be the winning stroke against her. She pushed off enough to meet his face, but not enough to de-squirrel him. He noticed in that moment, seconds before she told him, something different about her, something more beautiful. He forgot his plan to tease her to exhaustion. Turambar waited for her to speak. 

Niniel caressed his face, becoming unusually nervous, and she kissed him on his lips, soft and lingering. She feigned a frown that was somehow also delighted, and he smiled back. She escaped another wave of his tender, strategic kisses that happily distracted her. 

Curse him! He knew her exact. Knew where the blooms of pleasure sprang fastest against his mouth. A little tickle at the back of her neck made her laugh. Turambar drew away, her neck rolling under the spell of his thick hand. Daunted by the warmth spreading up and down her spine and through her legs that were wound around him, Niniel somehow kept her thighs gripped tight and secure on Turambar the Tree.

“I want to tell you you’re going to be a father,” she said, nodding smartly as he pretended to ignore her to look down her shirt. “But I can leave if you want to go back to sleep.” 

Turambar reacted as he did in the wild, fast and with all of his body. He grabbed her, brought her higher and closer, their noses almost crashing together. She yelped as he lifted her and laughed as he spun her. Niniel paid no thought to her dizziness and the pains already toiling her body. Turambar spun and spun until he lost his footing. 

From tree to worm, Turambar broke her fall, landing in a hard thud on his back that broke the floor and made him crunch up when Niniel landed on his stomach. Bam! Not at all like a squirrel. He choked and croaked, but he laughed too. Niniel gave him not one moment. “Surrender,” she said, taking hands that were glad to be taken.

The fall was nothing for Turambar, who had endured much by that time in his manhood. Fast, he grabbed Niniel and was up again, needing no hands just strength and speed.

It was the happiest moment of his life.

 

-

 

“Mine too,” said Nienor, coming away from what was surely to be their final kiss. “A cub may tame a wolf, I thought.”

Turin rolled the _eeees_ in a deep long boom in imitation of the Big Ones who sometimes talked to Beleg. And he squeezed her gently, their faces close together. “Nay, I am a tree. And you are my bane. The little squirrel.” Her hair he combed down her back with his fingers, trailing down her spine. 

All of her shivered when a sudden gust of wind brought on more chills, or perhaps she called it, because she knew exactly what he would do. Turin rubbed her back, hands curving down her body gently, leading them into another long, languid sway. 

Body to body, flame to flame, sweet relief washed over them, greater than their shame and greater even than Time that they saw in their wish to disappear into each other, to find a place where nothing touched them. 

They sought it again, unknowing, wishing to be more than alone. To be. Just to be. To be one. Without shame. Without grief. Without pain. Was that possible? They had conquered death. Why not?

There in the Outer Rims of the Circles of the World where the Children of Hurin wished to be and disappear, Melkor’s music could yet be heard, for he had sent his thought out in the Beginning seeking the Flame Imperishable before Arda was made. The dying strum of his ancient discord was strung, stretched beyond its beauty, never satisfied. It sought survival like all beings close to death, one last bite left.

Nienor was the stronger of the Children of Hurin in the unseen world. She took fast to her Power and she saw Turin’s dark doom. His death she beheld, but farther she went and deeper. She saw his life. His fierce love and intense hate. The home he longed for. The friends he killed. The cities he felled after raising them. His wife who he loved above all others. And finally, the wall and the crack. It burst.

 _Brandir_?

Brandir as Turambar last saw him, looking up at him with fearful determination and a great shock in the last second as the greatest of dark swords came down on him. The one Gurthang did not savor. Killing Turin his master was easier for this act.

Stunned, Nienor pulled away, shaking her head. His eyes were hers again, fast and needing clarity. She beheld Brandir standing up to her, to Turin. The fear taking him in that second before the sword came down.

She breathed hard. “You killed him... you killed Brandir.”

Turin stern hard face was terrible to behold, that same intense anger that finally made Brandir lift his chin at the moment of his death.

Despite Hurin’s golden hair and the Red darkening it, hers was Morwen’s face, a mirror to Turin’s. Harsh and unyielding and beautiful in its wrath. Anyone caught underneath the steel gaze obeyed. Against each other it was giant against giant.

Nienor waited for him to speak, but Turin said nothing.

“At least you two finally agreed on something,” Nienor spoke first and bitterly. Yes, Brandir had been very clever, and in the end not unlike Turin, hiding the truth from her. “Were you ever going to tell me?”

“I wanted to dance with my wife and speak with her afterwards, so no. I did not set aside a time when to tell her I killed her closest friend and became a kinslayer.”

Nienor was not smiling this time. “You’re not funny.” 

“I am not trying to be.” Turin sighed deeply, his head pounding again. He quieted it, finding even her anger comforting. He longed for the ripped cloth on his hand. He had taken to fingering it when he was most afraid in his darkness. Thinking on it, he remembered Lalaithan held it now and that comforted him too. 

Turin did not want to push her away. His anger faded and he bared himself to her as he did on her childbed, when he thought he was going to lose her again.

“I was in darkness when Brandir helped me,” he said. “He told me my name and he led me to you. He said _nothing_ else besides my kin being here. Nothing of… of my sister being my wife!” Turin’s anger took hold and he dared to step closer. “My _pregnant_ wife who he has been in love with for… for _fuck all time_!”

Turin stopped suddenly and stepped away. Nienor had not moved at all, unafraid of Turin’s rages. 

Not a foul word ever escaped Turin’s mouth. He never cursed. Never. Even in his anger. Not amongst the outlaws or the Easterlings he felled or in war councils with Brandir where they always disagreed.

“Let us not put Brandir’s name forth for one of Cirdan’s ships West, is what I mean,” Turin added less passionately, looking at the ground in shame.

Nienor frowned at the name. Cirdan the Shipwright? He had helped her...

 _The mithril cloak!_

Nienor touched her neck where a pin should have held it. So much happened so fast. The cloak must have fallen when Brandir found her or it was lost during the ambush, she did not know.

“I am deeply sorry for what I did,” Turin went on. “I am. He did not deserve it. I will not lie. I do not care for Brandir as you do, though I did respect him, even if he never believed it. When he told me what happened to you, I wanted to unmake the world. I cared not that I took him down.” He paused a while and admitted. “I did stop respecting him a little more towards the end.”

“Your apology is appreciated, but it is useless on me.” Brandir’s need to rise to high honor amongst the people he lost to Turambar always seemed to her something he would get over. Apparently not. “He’s suffered a lot.”

Turin suffered a few lost teeth for it. He huffed. “He was lame. What of it?”

“Brethil alone of the Edain withstood the Easterlings after the Nirnaeth. He kept our people together and offered both of us shelter. He is a good man, Turin.”

“Not a great one. That is his problem, I think.”

Nienor seethed. She wanted to beat him and crush him. Damn his stubbornness!

Turin knew her thought, and though she wanted to kill him she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. She was also right. He was stubborn. Her challenge was unspoken, but it was still a challenge.

“You should try,” he said. “I know I am the better swordsman.”

Nienor laughed, her bitterness turned to anger turned to amusement. She Willed a sword into her hand and gripped it. “Do not be so sure, brother.” 

“This is not fair,” said Turin, grinning. His breeches tightened. “You know I will not harm you.”

Nienor could not force away her smile. She tried.

“Do you even know how to hold that thing?” He asked.

Nienor did know. “I learned some.”

Her stance was strong.

Nienor couldn't convince Morwen and Melian when they finally made it to Doriath to let her train as a shieldmaiden. When they forbade it she obeyed, yet she watched Mablung and the guards. She even learned a few tricks from Nellas, when she bothered the little elf enough. Turambar had given her lessons, too. Simple instructions in case of ambush. That was with a knife, but how different could they be. Ears, eyes, neck, ankles, knees, wrists, the groin of man, woman or orc. Hit any one of those and you had an advantage.

Nienor’s eyes drifted to all those places on him. Completely exposed. 

Turin did not fear her… mostly. He would rather kiss her.

“Now surely you blush,” he said. 

His fire touched hers, reaching out when his hands wouldn’t and in her thought she felt his lips on hers.

A bright orange glow filled the Red above the trees, making them more visible than shadows.

“Our camp,” said Nienor, noticing it first, far off northwest. “We moved? We barely walked.”

When Nienor looked on him again he was in Black, covered in mail and leather, weapons on a belt, and clean shaven. Hand resting on his hilt, sword securely in an unadorned leather scabbard.

Nienor sheathed hers in a belt she’d always wanted, of a kind the great Elven ladies wore in Menegroth. It was silver and iron, but otherwise unadorned. It matched the cloak she had lost and could not Will to return, no matter how hard she tried. Strange, she thought, that she could have one but not the other.

“How did we even get out here?” asked Nienor.

“We wished to be alone.”

“I did not wish that,” she lied.

Now they had no excuse. Not reason to stay in the dark.

Nienor made for the light, but he stopped her, taking her hand and drawing her back. He did not know what he meant to say, but he had no need to think on it. Hooves sounded from the southeast, very close to where they stood, in the shadow of the sentinels. Out of instinct Turin pulled Nienor further in.

“Is this when I fall into your arms?” She whispered, her old instincts coming back to her too. Hiding always from Easterlings or some orc horde or wolf men. “It did not work for Brandir, it will not work for you.”

Turin smiled and looked on her, tall and proud, angry and sad all at once. He cupped her cheek, his thumb grazing her glistening lips that parted for him. He was about to kiss her when a rider came through a new road from the black. He wore a visor that entirely covered his face, a great tail with many loose hair and braids flowed at the top of it, long and light against dark armor. 

The rider slowed his horse to a trot and spoke, but the voice was high and light.

-

“A woman,” Nienor guessed rightly.

The rider removed her visor and let loose tresses longer than the visors and nearly the exact light shade. 

“She has a white horse on her armor,” marked Turin.

“Good, Windfola,” said the rider. She did not hold the reins, yet Windfola moved wherever the rider looked. “I see it better now.”

The horse neighed and shook his head aggressively.

“No,” she told her horse more quietly. “It is not like Pelennor. There we could not help the dead. Here we are the Dead. If the rumors are true, there are people of the Fires we want to know. Great people with Wills greater than our own. Heroes of the ancient days.”

“Look,” said Turin. He smiled when the rider guided Windfola to step to the side, instead of forwards or backwards. “They are friends.”

“Many families use the horse as a sigil,” said Nienor. “Maybe she is another of our kin, or a Northern ally.” Another rider approached, again from the southeast. His cloak glimmered green in the Red. “Is that Boromir?” asked Nienor, close to Turin.

“No. It is not.”

Yet they were much alike. Dark haired, bright eyed. He wore the same green cloak and silver leaf, but he had something else that shone against the Red, a silver ring with a brilliant green gem. 

Turin could not see it clearly, but he wished to know it and did. “He wears Barahir’s ring.”

His clothes were worn and dark, similar to Turin when he went as Neithan amongst the outlaws, but he was much older. Some of his dark hair was streaked with light.

“Let's make ourselves known,” said Nienor. “Another bearing a Noldor cloak is chance. One wearing both cloak and leaf must be of the same company as your friend, Boromir.”

“Wait,” said Turin. He wrapped an arm around her to stop her. “We wished to be alone. Let us grant them the same courtesy.”

Nienor looked at Turin sharply, his smile against her frown. “I do not wish to be alone with you,” she said, repeating the lie as if it would become true. “I want to hear at least their names.”

Turin was curious about Barahir’s ring. He released his firm hold, but they stood close together to watch the strangers. Whatever they said first was missed. The riders were dismounted. A great distance was between them.

“I cannot help who I am,” said the rider, her chin raised high, proud, but she was close to Windfola, using him almost like a shield. “No more than you can, Aragorn son of Arathorn.

Aragorn son of Arathorn in the green cloak and ring answered her. “A rider. A fighter. A bright flame of her people. Eowyn daughter of Eomund.” 

He walked to her with much weariness in his steps. The rider Eowyn changed, first very still, but then Windfola became agitated and she had to calm him. A distraction to save her. 

Aragorn went to Windfola and stroked his long neck, speaking soothing words in the ancient Elvish tongue. Eowyn’s eyes were locked on him, anger and anguish glinting inside of them.

“She does not wish to be here with him, but she cannot bear to leave,” whispered Nienor.

Turin smiled. “That is more than a hint. I believe you just checked me.”

Nienor shook her head. a tiny smile curling her lips. “Shh.” 

They turned back to the riders. 

“I rode all night,” said Aragorn with great pain. “But I arrived too late.”

Nienor saw it as a vision in their thought, for Aragorn’s grief was great, so great Eowyn beheld it. Turin being close and open to Nienor’s fire, saw it with her. 

Aragorn opening a letter. Aragorn riding ceaselessly day and night, many days over many lands. Aragorn needing to stop or else die himself, and upon waking seeing blood on the sky, a horizon tinged with red, and he knew she was gone. A piercing in his heart. He stood on a secluded hill of great power and did not weep. Anger overwhelmed him. 

“She died,” whispered Turin.

“She is here, Turin. Of course she died,” said Nienor.

“Do you remember what I told you?” Eowyn asked Aragorn.

“You do not fear death.”

“It is true now, and it was true when I first saw you. So much has passed since then. All the joys of my life began to fade, one by one, until there remained only grief. There I found you again. And the grief you left in my heart did not seem so dark.“

“Eowyn…”

“It was a doom, I see now,” said Eowyn sadly, finally able to approach him. She smiled. “You held my hands that night, on the Paths of the Dead, and kissed them. I wished to go with you more than anything in the world, to die with you. I gave up hope, or I'd keep him with me.” She touched his throat with the edge of her fingers, drawing them down to the green and silver leaf.

The Children of Hurin felt from the strangers shame, and greater than that, regret. 

Aragorn touched her hair, twining his fingers down the length of it, because he never had and he never would again. They kissed.

Nienor knew Eowyn the White Lady of Rohan, the Shieldarm of her people, Slayer of the Witch King and the Reclaimer of Ithilien. Her joy and grief with peace, her husband Faramir and her children. She saw her life overcome the darkness, and deeper still the piece of her that remained untamed.

Turin saw Aragorn's wandering, his longing, his years of ceaseless toil with brief moments of rest with his love Arwen in an Elven paradise that took Turin’s breath away. Aragorn had many names. Thorongil. Estel. Elessar. King. Strider. For he was pursued and hunted and feared by a great power.

Eowyn and Aragorn felt all in that kiss, and it was their first and last, Their great flame cast out the secret desire buried deepest in their hearts. Love left to the blackest dark.

“More than a dream. A curse,” said Eowyn. “Like Turin and Nienor.”

Turin and Nienor huddled close, for it felt like the riders had walked over their graves. 

Aragorn took her hands, bringing them to his chest. “That is a sad tale, my lady. One of great grief.”

A nightingale flew about and Eowyn grinned as it sang. “No sadder than yours.”

“Eowyn…” 

“They were cursed to find each other again,” she said, hoping he would spare her the last of his regrets. “Death released them from their burden.”

Aragorn nodded slow, smiling. “Nienna wove mourning into the Circles the World,” he said.

“Then there is no escaping it,” said Eowyn.

Aragorn’s cool eyes softened her fierceness, and for a long time they said nothing. 

“I will help you, my friend,” said Eowyn finally. “But you must help me first. And if you try to stop me this time, I will hurt you.”

Aragorn laughed. “I pity any who stand in your way.”

Nienor turned from them, forgetting her plan to announce herself. Turin followed her, clearing the way for them with his Will. She was headed south, from wherever the riders came, away from the campfires.

“Had enough?” asked Turin. “That is the wrong way,” he said when she didn’t answer.

-

“That is impossible,” she said when he caught up to her. “We go where we please.”

“Then you admit, you wanted to be alone.”

Nienor stopped abruptly and turned to him, but she was not angry. “Did you see their thought?”

“I did.”

“They were careless,” she said absently, thinking out loud.

Turin laughed. “They were old friends, and they left too much unsaid. Death can spare them one kiss.”

Nienor smiled a little, thinking of Brandir suddenly and the kiss he stole after the Menelmalcar burst. “We can enter into the thought of others. See as they see. See more. Feel as they feel. When we’re together, I think we are stronger.”

A long silence swelled between them, their Power like a rising tide. All they had to do was focus and the Depths of Time would take them. Turin and Nienor felt keenly every parting suddenly.

They crashed together and kissed hard, so hard they had to stop and take a breather, settle into another game of handsies, but that was short lived. Without the shame or the tenderness, they could be careless too.

Nienor pulled away from his lips, seeing what he did not. Turin was overcome, uncaring of anything directly outside his hold. She grabbed his chin and forced him to see. They stood on a road.

Turin huffed through a scrunched up mouth between her fingers. “Shit.”

Nienor heard something rustling and let him go. “What is that? Their company?”

Turin kissed her cheek, her hair in between her skin and his lips. “It’s nothing… nothing.”

Nienor pulled him back into the pitch dark. Turin sighed comically. 

A stampede of mounted riders flew across, barely making a sound. Many wore the tree and stars on their shields, doublets, banners, and others bore the white horse. Turin and Nienor watched them pass, music and fanfare going with them instead of the hooves. Almost a vision. Turin and Nienor saw the work of one man’s Will in this, but he was far stronger than either of them and he let them not into his thought. 

“It is like the men leaving for the Nirnaeth,” said Turin. “The one I used to see in dreams. Would there were stars in this wasteland.” 

Nienor looked up at the Red. Dark, dark as the Void, and she swallowed hard as she thought.

Turin smiled at her. “You can’t.”

Nienor Willed them to return. A million stars. As many as the dead that walked, and the Menelmalcar glowing, throbbing red. One by one they came into the Red Lands, the first brightness in the world colored of blood.

“You have _ungol_ slime on you,” said Turin, noticing for the first time.

Her eyebrows rose. “ _Ungol_ … that’s Sindarin for...”

“For spider.”

“Oh.” 

Turin met no wall and would not have met one, if he reached, but he trusted her and did not ask. 

“I have something for you,” he said. “You must shut your eyes first.”

“You have learned we can read each other's minds and the minds of others and you want me to shut my eyes?”

Turin Willed it and pulled a blindfold out his pocket. It was getting easier. “No cheating. I will know.”

Turin tied the blindfold over her eyes. His arm came around her, and she caught her breath, waiting for him to come at her, to kiss her and devour her, but he did not. He barely held her and guided her, walking with her for several minutes. Then he raised one of her hands with his, his warmth making her relax, and he covered his hand with hers to rest... on a rough stone wall. 

Nienor removed the blindfold and covered her mouth. They were at the front gate of House Hador as it once stood in Dor-lomin, now in the Land of the Dead. The shadow of it from Turin’s memory. 

Two torches burned bright blue on the sides of a great archway leading inside. Nienor took one, Turin the other and they walked down a dark stone corridor into a Great Hall with a dry hearth in the middle, unkindled. The ceiling opened above, letting in Red and white starlight. 

The Children of Hurin stood on either side of the hearth and threw in their torches, igniting a magnificent blue blaze and revealing other archways to stairs that lead further into the rest of the house. Willed by Nienor this time, who knew the house better than Turin. She did not tell him he had most of it wrong.

Nienor stared at the flames and at Turin behind them. 

“I wonder where they are,” she said.

Turin wondered also of Hurin and Morwen and the rest of their kin, but they did not speak of it again. They lay together by the fire, on the hard floor they loved and missed. With her fingers she played with his armor and unhooked the clasps to reach into his shirt and touch him. He held his breath almost, knowing her Power. If she were cruel, misshapen by Melkor, by his curse, she would reach into Turin’s skin and pass his muscle and bone and take his fire, but she was not cruel. She was steadfast and beautiful, and she was his blood.

“I don’t have to,” he said. Nerves that rarely woke shivered within him, his secret desire bright beside it. A strange feeling, both light and invigorating, but frightening too. “I am content to have you here, like this. To have you here at all.” He sighed deeply. “Your hair.“ He cupped her cheek softly, grazing the strands. Her scent filled his nose, taking him to well treasured memories. He moved his knees so she was closer to him, and she breathed hard, gazing down to look on him. “Your legs. Your breath. Your eyes. Seeing you smile again. Never did I ever dream to see such miracles again.”

Nienor leaned down and kissed him. Turin remembered his wife well and could not ignore her. Powers growing, he saw the shadow of her fear. She was lost inside. Pain made her shake. Death was close, ever close. Her hand came out of his chest, her hand grazing his scar as she pulled out of his armor. He held in a fast breath as her palm went low. Turin let it out in sweet agony. Nienor went for his sword. 

“Wrong sword,” he smiled against her mouth. 

Her hand closed around the cold hilt instead of the knot stretched hot against his breeches.

The sword hissed as Nienor unsheathed it, the silver edge glinting against blue fire and white starlight. Nienor brought it up carefully, and she held it against his neck. “Cold?”

“Not at all,” he lied with a smile. He lifted his chin against the bite.

“This is not Gurthang. The stars would have recognized their brother.”

“Would they?”

“I think so.”

The sword barely held him at bay as they kissed again, but she was not ready. Not yet. He laughed, sucking one last time on her tongue, his armor a clunky terrible obstacle between them, but he couldn't Will it away. Not until she commanded it.

The curve of his throat bobbed as she slicked it down his bare neck. 

“Sharp?” She whispered.

“I have never asked for mercy. Perhaps I should start now.”

“If you ask for mercy then you are not Turin.” She wavered, her nose brushing against his face to finally kiss him. “Turambar,” she said. “My husband.” Her stomach shook over his and her steady hand began to tremble. 

There was another possibility, one that he had not considered. Turin could not deny her hesitation, and he wondered…

Turin combed her hair behind her ear and asked with great pain. “Are you afraid of me, Nienor?”

The question startled her and the sword’s edge cut him. He bled a teardrop of pure red, blooming perfect and then rolling back. 

Turin laughed. Nienor did not. She let the sword drop aside. It clanked to a halt. With the same hand she wiped his cut with her fingers. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Turambar. I didn’t mean to cut you. I was just playing a stupid game.”

Turin took her hand and cleaned his blood off her fingers by rubbing it into his palms. He crunched up, pressed against her hair and kissed her neck, her shoulder, but the moment she couldn’t focus, her stomach shaking, she shot up to sit. He rubbed her back and followed her. 

“You can tell me,” he said, unafraid of what she would say or ask of him. He would never touch her again, if that gave her peace of mind.

“All that trouble,” she said, embarrassed. After a moment, she said, “I… I don’t want any more children.”

Turin nodded gravely. “No more children. Agreed.”

She had more to say, and it was difficult for her. “Out there, we can’t… we are brother and sister. I care not what they think, but neither will I be a show for them.”

Turin gently took her hand. “What we do is our business.”

Nienor watched him kiss her wrist. They would spend much time out there, with others, and they already tried staying apart. It made her miserable. 

“Alright,” she said quickly, the warmth blooming from his kiss, all the way up her arm. “You may hold my hand.”

Turin took the back of her hand and kissed her there. Another sweet bloom that took the sting of all their partings. 

“And kiss it,” she added with a small smile. “But… other than that.”

She took her hand back to caress his face. 

“I have healed it, I should keep it,” he said.

“That would make Brandir very happy, I’m sure.”

At the name, Turin paused thoughtfully. “I _am_ sorry.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry that you are hurting. That I am hurting you.”

“Turin…”

“I meant it. Every word. I will stay away and we will have no more children.” His eyes drifted to the fire, and he shuffled a little as he sat. He started to seriously consider the details of such an arrangement, never touching her again except to hold and kiss her hand. “That won’t be so difficult.”

Turin looked on her, her legs that were bent towards him, partly exposed because of her dress, and at her bare arms and neck, the fire behind her rising. Then he quickly looked away, nodding, trying not to seem so dejected.

Nienor smiled. She took a deep breath and brought her hand to the bulge between his legs. Turin smiled back weakly, licking his lips.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“You must… _spill_ outside of me,” she said, a little embarrassed herself.

Turin coughed. “Oh.”

“Now _you_ blush, and I can tell, so you can’t lie like I did.”

His cough turned to a laugh, but he took her hand from his breeches and closed it around his again. “Is that why you pull away from me all these times? You are afraid to be with child again?”

Nienor let him see, for a brief moment, the pains of childbed. Turin frowned deeply, and he pushed himself out. He touched her cheek. 

“Nienor…”

“I want to,” she whispered. “I want to, but… I don’t know. What if I never can again? What if it is not my shame that keeps me from you, but this? This weakness…”

Turin kissed her softly. “It is not a weakness. You hurt. Now you must heal. I am full of shame now. I have not ceased. Demanding you yield to me.”

Nienor laughed at that. “Demanding?”

“Insisting,” he corrected with a smile. “I will wait.”

“But...”

“I waited all my life for you. I can wait a little longer.”

“But,” and she spoke faster so he would not interrupt, “what if I never heal?”

“Then…” Turin kissed the back of her hand again. “Then I will be there to kiss your hurts away as much as I can. In the dark. No one will hurt you again. Not even me.”

Turin cleared her cheeks and guided them back to lie together. Nienor held him tighter and she had a smile when she looked on him. 

“We can do all the good, nice things a brother and sister should do. While we wait,” Turin said with sincerity that brightened her smile.

Nienor chuckled. “Are you counting the minutes?”

Turin flushed. “Wait for the others,” he meant. “To finish eating.”

Nienor grinned and nodded, kissing away his pretend incredulity. 

“This will be hard,” he said, licking her taste from his lips.

“I agree,” she said knowingly.

Turin waited, one arm under her neck and the other on his side, hand in a closed fist as she reached down again. 

“What?” The question died in his throat.

Once she loosened the breeches, she spat into her palm and reached under to take him in her hand.

Pleasure took him and instinct made him turn to her, already going to lift her dress up her thighs, but she told him to lie still.

“I want you to feel this too,” he said, breathless and frowning, promise already forgotten.

Her smile was perfect, kind. “I do,” she said and she kissed Turin, their mouths opening together again as the sweet aching spread through him. And he said it again, against her neck, through her hair, desperate to touch her but content to squeeze her neck, until he forgot. He could think of nothing except coming for her, reaching with his thought into her instead with his hands and finding her on the edge of his release. He spent in his breeches, groaning loud and going stiff and then shaking, panting into her throat. 

Nienor turned away from him, and he whimpered, but she did move away. She adjusted herself to rest her back against his stomach. Turin closed his arm around her, still out of breath, and he kissed the back of her neck, sending a shiver down her spine.

Nienor slept, safe in Turin’s arms, warmed by his fire and the blue, and she dreamed. She dreamed of New Arda. Not a shadow on it, no Red Sky.

All those souls in the Dead Lands with their hurts and their pains, a million lives. More, maybe, and each was as a drop in the vast ocean. Just a drop. All of their lives and their happiness, their curse, their grief, their love, just a single drop, faded and forgotten and lost, swallowed by the Depths and kept forever by Time. And fear left her, fear at least of Nameless retribution, for the drop seemed all the more precious now, hurts and all, as water becomes gold to the parched.

Nienor rose and watched the blue fire dance on Turin’s sleeping form and she caressed his cheek, instantly drawing him to her again. 

She walked the halls of House Hador as it was, remembering and hurting, but the pain was not so terrible anymore. She walked to the sound of clanging swords in the courtyard filled with bright daylight. A vision, or perhaps a memory, or a glimpse to a time never to be. 

Turambar was teaching Lalaithan, who was about eight or nine, and he was his father’s spitting image only his hair was gold. He was fast, quick to learn. Turambar got the better of him and he laughed, making Lalaithan laugh back and charge. So nimble and little, he jumped on Turambar too quickly for Turambar to get over his laughter. Lalaithan pulled his father’s head from behind, settled on his shoulders, and brought him down. Both fell in a bundle of leaves that rained up. When he looked up and saw Nienor, squinting in recognition, the vision was gone, replaced by a shimmer in the green. Lalaithan again. A little older. Dressed like a woodland creature, bow grasped in hand, and he ran and ran and ran, until he stopped. A beautiful deer, spotted black and white, ears pricked, stopped beside him. Lalaithan saw her again, but this time he smiled, and then he was gone. She saw Lalaithan many more times. As a grown man. As a father himself. As a babe again, in her arms.

The sound of footsteps brought her back to the darker courtyard, the Land of the Dead, but she did not miss it. Turin walked up behind her, cleared her hair off her shoulder and kissed her there.

“When first I saw you,” he said. “I wished to kiss you right here. For months that was all I thought about.”

Nienor smiled. “I thought you were being possessive.”

“I was,” he said, smiling. “Did you sleep?”

Nienor did not know if they could sleep, but she rested. True rest. She nodded. Turin was glad. He took her hand and kissed the back of it. 

“Now we go back,” he said.

As if in answer there was a loud boom from the gates, and they met Tulkas and Nessa and Harleth with baby Lalaithan in a sling. And hundreds of others around the great blue hearth. Turin and Nienor stood side by side and greeted the guests together. Amongst them came Boromir.

Turin greeted him with big open arm.

“I have met my brothers again, my lord,” Boromir said, introducing them as they approached. “This is Faramir, Prince of Ithilien, and his wife, Eowyn, the Lady of Rohan.”

Turin and Nienor both bowed to the couple, and then they passed a glance at each other. 

The people headed to the tables, having enough talk from the campfires. Food was set up in gigantic bowls, already hot and ready to eat. Jugs of beer and glasses of wine ready to be poured. Neither of them needed to eat, but they liked the excuse as they looked upon Boromir and his company.

“And here is my brother in arms,” said Boromir, and he paused suddenly, as if remembering something. “He goes by Strider.”

Turin and Nienor nodded at the man they knew as Aragorn, whose thought was open to them once. A great trespass, they realized then. Their thoughts were heavy built with walls now.

“Let us sit together,” said Nienor. “But I need to check my son. Turin, you will get us,” she looked at the packed tables all around them. Lanterns were set up nearer to the corners where the blue light faded and gave them room to spread. “Some part of some table, won’t you?”

Turin nodded and he dared to get a little closer to whisper. “You make good strategic use of time.”

“This is simple math. I have excused myself from an extremely awkward situation that is somehow worse than you and me having a child together.”

Turin smiled softly again. Barely above whispering, he said, “I want to kiss you.”

Nienor barely held it together, turning back to her guests. “I’ll join you shortly.”

Nienor was glad to leave. She was sure all of her neck was red. Before she disappeared completely, she caught Turin’s eyes. He stood straight, too formal, and came off as awkward. His eyes screamed, “Help me.” And she laughed as she ascended.

At the top of the stair she met Brandir. 

Both were in the cusp of their Power, and without words gaged what had been revealed. He bowed in deference. 

Nienor could not damn him, no more than she could damn herself or her true brother, and her heart, though it did not beat for him, was full of pity for him. Pity he gracefully accepted.

He passed her to go down and join the feasts, shoulders slightly bent and body tired, but his lameness he had not acknowledged just yet. She stopped him abruptly, and they were close. 

Nienor kissed his cheek and lingered. His fire burned for her, but he kept it from ignition, shutting his eyes.

Brandir still shook her off, taking her hand suddenly and kissing it and then letting it go.

“He is sleeping,” he said of Lalaithan, who he just left.

“That is good, right?”

“Very good. All babies do is eat and sleep. I’ll see you in a while.”

Nienor nodded. Then: “He wishes to speak with you.”

Brandir smiled sardonically. “ _To_ me, maybe.”

“Either way. I know both of you are too stubborn to say so. But I know you wish to speak with him, too.”

“I _have_ spoken with him.”

“You spoke to his shell,” Nienor said less kindly. “As you spoke to Nienor’s shell once.”

Brandir lifted his chin as if to better see her. “Is Niniel gone?”

“She has slept. Who has awoken? I am still figuring that out.”

Brandir nodded again. And he headed down the stairs, leaving her to Lalaithan. 

Nienor entered the room and found Harleth asleep and Lalaithan resting soundly also. She approached the crib with much trepidation, but excitement too. She picked up the babe with much care, bringing the bundle to her chest. The head was heavier than the rest of him, and it surprised her, put her on her toes. She held him steady by the neck and his little bum. Squirming, Lalaithan threatened to wake, but he snuggled close against her chest when she scooped him in a slow up against her, bringing the ripped cloth to his nose and closing in above her breasts. Nienor breathed deeply, and she cried silently, dropping her mouth slowly to the top her babe’s head. He smelled sweet and wonderful. He was so small. His heart beat so fast.

Brandir met Turin at the bottom stairs leading to the Great Hall.

“Escaping adoring fans?” asked Brandir.

“I would welcome them,” was all Turin would say. He looked back to a group of young men and women sitting together.

“Do you know them?” asked Brandir, who recognized Boromir but not the others.

“More than I would like,” said Turin smiling.

Brandir was taken aback by the sight of Turin so content. “I know the feeling.”

Brandir made to leave, but Turin stopped him. It was eerily similar to what Nienor had done, the same face, the same hold, not too firm but with clear intent. 

“We need to gather a council,” said Turin. “Something small. Myself, you. Nienor, of course. Boromir. We need weapons. _Real_ weapons. Nothing we conjure is enough. My father kept a War Room here, somewhere.”

The orders weren’t exactly orders, and it irked Brandir some, but he nodded. 

“Thank you,” said Turin. “For bringing me back to her.”

“I didn’t.”

“No. That’s right. You didn’t.” Turin paused a while, and he let Brandir go. “Nevertheless, I’m… I’m sorry.”

Brandir swallowed down hard. “Sorry?”

“For what I did to you. I will not lie. I wished you deep harm, but I wish you harm no longer.” He bowed and raised his head, face stern. “Nienor loves you, and I love what she loves.”

Brandir leaned in before departing into the gluttonous throng. “Please. You don’t have to.”

Turin let out a small laugh unbidden. “Good.”

Then they did something they never had before: they shook hands, and they let go quickly, without fuss.

Turin went into the room set up as a nursery. A real room with four walls and a crib and a window looking out at night, torches in the corners. Nienor rocked Lalaithan against her chest. He was drifting awake, but his eyes were drooping shut again. 

“I woke him by accident,” she said, heading for the crib.

Turin watched her set him down, all of her torn with worry. He went to her and caressed her back, felt her calm.

“Brandir is putting together some people,” he told her. “We should go. If we want to ride soon.”

Nienor smiled. “That was fast.”

“We are not the best of friends yet, I’m sorry for that.”

Nienor slapped his face lightly. “You are stubborn.”

Turin came in slow for a soft kiss on the lips. They both moaned. Then they parted, and took another look at Lalaithan before leaving him and Harleth to sleep. And they found the War Room, where Brandir gathered Boromir and his kin and friends, for they had much to discuss about the coming assault against Melkor.

 

-

 

Mandos knew at last his work in the Last Theme, and it was not his song that would guide the Land of the Dead, but those left wavering in his kingdom, the ones who had remained. Mandos armed them or told them to arm themselves, portending the Sundering of Arda by the Children of Hurin, and he called on Feanor, greatest of the Noldor, Highest of all the Elves save Finwe his father and Galadriel his cousin. He called on Feanor to come forth from Formenos, and the great house he had fortified into the mightiest fortress in any circle in any age. Feanor brooded on all the tragedies of his house, and he ignored Mandos’s call, but he could not ignore the laughter in his thought, for he had not heard such a sound in ages untold. Feanor raised his head and asked who was there and Nienor’s laugh echoed and waned and Feanor was shaken, curious about the mind penetrating his. An accident. A new Power in a place where nothing new grew and he did not see through the Depths but he knew. There was a place beyond the Beyond, where life and death did not exist, only the Flame. In there lurked All and the Forgotten too.


End file.
